@Lentwood I agree in general that they do have that advantage, however that has little to do with why they are 14 points ahead instead of maybe 7 or 5.
“ If De Bruyne (£68m) has an off day, City have Mahrez (£61m), Sterling (£57m), Silva (£45m), Foden, Gundogan (£24m), & Ferran (£21m)
- Thread starter Wumminator
- Start date
Except City have never signed anyone for the price of either Lukaku or Maguire.
And it's all good saying that if City's signings fail, but very few of them have failed.
Martial was injured!
It’s still pretty simple, you put Rashord or Greenwood alongside Cavani in an extremely attacking 4-4-2 and go for it.
Stop making bullshit excuses like he had no options, he had plenty but thought they were all too risky.
I don't think he had many options at all. Our bench was atrocious.
Do 5 year cycles exist in football? Once we start approaching that players are agitating to leave, the ones hat don't are long past their prime. We didn't buy Bruno and Maguire with a plan to win in 2024.
I feel like these cycles keep getting longer and we're really just getting conned into giving Ole "till he gets it right" which let's be honest even his biggest backers aren't even sure will ever come
I agree with this. This thread is the worst way to defend and explain why it's struggling. Look at all the shit results we've had, what the feck have they got to do with Man City ?So we need 300m+ worth of talent to beat Palace do we
Brighton had over 10 shots on goal more than us against them!
Most expensive signings in PL history:
1. Paul Pogba £89m
2. Harry Maguire £78m
3. Romelu Lukaku £75m
All made in the last 5 years. That money would've been enough to buy every single squad player mentioned in the OP tweet and then some.
Maybe let's start by not throwing record fees around if we're apparently too poor to replace mistakes (despite spending 1,3 billion in 10 years).
Can we please just stop with this nonsense about a player's value? We have a 85m defender in our back four, who can't dominate or defend properly. We have a 39m pund bench warmer, that Ole dont trust. We have a 40m pund teenager without barely any first team matches from Atalanta, we have an superexperienced Cavani, a great frontman. According to that tweet, Maguire should be better than Stones, Dias and Laporte, since he cost more than them? That's not the point. Our problem, when Rashford or Bruno dont perform, that the other players dont know what to do or work a cohesive unit.
What makes City works so effortlessly are their maniac of a coach, who works constantly with improving their tactics. A modern coach, who knows, in order to overcome obstacles, injuries, and other unseen future problems, you have to have a system, that the players understand and where the roles on each position is clear. That's why KDB can get injured, and the next man comes in and the team barely drops in performance. I would bet everything I had, that if Ole was the manager of City's current squad, and KDB got injured, you would experience his absence. Because Ole is a bad coach. Our system is based on Bruno doing his wonder, and when he doesn't, everything falls apart. That's bad coaching.
Ole cant coach properly for United's level. Do people remember the time from february 2019 until january 2020, where we had no Bruno? We played some absolutely horrendous football. Bruno came in, and his energy and positive mindsind in terms of offensive football was contagious. But now the honey moon are over.
Football shouldn't be just through a necessary excel-sheet. This americanization of football needs to stop man. You can judge football through constantly numbers. I can take stats and make Maguire look like Vidic, or I can take numbers and make Darron Gibson look like Andres Iniesta. Remember Iniesta's stats was barely anything. But for me, he is the best midfielder, I've ever seen. Scholes scored more than him, De Bruyne assisted more than him, Carrick covered more space than him, Fletcher intercepted more than him. But none of them could do what Iniesta did in terms of utterly controlling the whole midfield with his presence. Scholes was of course close, but Iniesta just had another gear in terms of that.
Football fans truly believe that if you buy al the best players, you instantly get the best team. Football stars are massive egos. You have to settle them in and understand, that football is a team sport. You have to point things out for them.
I promise you, if you give Ole Mbappé, Messi, Varane, van Dijk, Kroos, de Bruyne, we wont necessarily win the games. Football coaching is about to manipulate the players into a cohesive team and understand the bigger picture. It either requires coaching skills or managerial skills. Coaching skills is someone like Pep. He is the main coach at City. Constantly at the training ground and each and every day coaching the players.
Managerial skills is someone like Sir Alex was. Barely at the training ground, but headhunted those competent people, who could create the team out of his vision and the way, he wanted to play and stand in the background and watch over it all like a Godfather from his desk.
With Ole, we have none of that. His coaching skills is nowhere near the requirements of United, and his managerial skills is to bang average. He's probably a good bloke, but you need to have that inner psycopath to make it all click. Sir Alex had that. Like Evra use to say. "I wasnt afraid of Sir Alex. I was afraid of dissappoint him".
I don't understand football fans sometimes. If you truly believe, that all Pep is doing is go to the front office, ask for players, just get the players and they just come into the City' training ground and they win everything, you simply misunderstand the professional world of sport. You have to create a synergy between 25 players, you have to make them understand, what you want on the team. You have to take 11+3/5 subs every third day to work as a cohesive unit and compete still. You have to take 11 individual minds and melt them into one.
Therefore, of course, City have great players, but I promise you, if we had Pep as our coach with the current squad, and City had Ole with the current squad, we would be closer to City and player better, while City would player worse and far from that good.
If you really think football is just plug-and-play type of football, where anybody can coach supremely gifted players with huge, huge egos, you are sadly mistaken. Athleles are truly different people. Most of the think they are gift from the gods to mankind and every should just follow them. And to have a squad of 25 players of that, you are some work at our hand.
The disrespect for Pep and his work is truly incredible. The bigger the stars, the bigger the work you have as manager.
What makes City works so effortlessly are their maniac of a coach, who works constantly with improving their tactics. A modern coach, who knows, in order to overcome obstacles, injuries, and other unseen future problems, you have to have a system, that the players understand and where the roles on each position is clear. That's why KDB can get injured, and the next man comes in and the team barely drops in performance. I would bet everything I had, that if Ole was the manager of City's current squad, and KDB got injured, you would experience his absence. Because Ole is a bad coach. Our system is based on Bruno doing his wonder, and when he doesn't, everything falls apart. That's bad coaching.
Ole cant coach properly for United's level. Do people remember the time from february 2019 until january 2020, where we had no Bruno? We played some absolutely horrendous football. Bruno came in, and his energy and positive mindsind in terms of offensive football was contagious. But now the honey moon are over.
Football shouldn't be just through a necessary excel-sheet. This americanization of football needs to stop man. You can judge football through constantly numbers. I can take stats and make Maguire look like Vidic, or I can take numbers and make Darron Gibson look like Andres Iniesta. Remember Iniesta's stats was barely anything. But for me, he is the best midfielder, I've ever seen. Scholes scored more than him, De Bruyne assisted more than him, Carrick covered more space than him, Fletcher intercepted more than him. But none of them could do what Iniesta did in terms of utterly controlling the whole midfield with his presence. Scholes was of course close, but Iniesta just had another gear in terms of that.
Football fans truly believe that if you buy al the best players, you instantly get the best team. Football stars are massive egos. You have to settle them in and understand, that football is a team sport. You have to point things out for them.
I promise you, if you give Ole Mbappé, Messi, Varane, van Dijk, Kroos, de Bruyne, we wont necessarily win the games. Football coaching is about to manipulate the players into a cohesive team and understand the bigger picture. It either requires coaching skills or managerial skills. Coaching skills is someone like Pep. He is the main coach at City. Constantly at the training ground and each and every day coaching the players.
Managerial skills is someone like Sir Alex was. Barely at the training ground, but headhunted those competent people, who could create the team out of his vision and the way, he wanted to play and stand in the background and watch over it all like a Godfather from his desk.
With Ole, we have none of that. His coaching skills is nowhere near the requirements of United, and his managerial skills is to bang average. He's probably a good bloke, but you need to have that inner psycopath to make it all click. Sir Alex had that. Like Evra use to say. "I wasnt afraid of Sir Alex. I was afraid of dissappoint him".
I don't understand football fans sometimes. If you truly believe, that all Pep is doing is go to the front office, ask for players, just get the players and they just come into the City' training ground and they win everything, you simply misunderstand the professional world of sport. You have to create a synergy between 25 players, you have to make them understand, what you want on the team. You have to take 11+3/5 subs every third day to work as a cohesive unit and compete still. You have to take 11 individual minds and melt them into one.
Therefore, of course, City have great players, but I promise you, if we had Pep as our coach with the current squad, and City had Ole with the current squad, we would be closer to City and player better, while City would player worse and far from that good.
If you really think football is just plug-and-play type of football, where anybody can coach supremely gifted players with huge, huge egos, you are sadly mistaken. Athleles are truly different people. Most of the think they are gift from the gods to mankind and every should just follow them. And to have a squad of 25 players of that, you are some work at our hand.
The disrespect for Pep and his work is truly incredible. The bigger the stars, the bigger the work you have as manager.
Hi, Roy Hodgson here. If Bruno Fernandes, £50m, has an off day United has Martial £50m, Pogba £80M, Rashford, Van de Beek £40M, Maguire £80M, AWB £50M, Amad £37M and Fred £50M, among others.
Maybe the question should be how on earth Manchester United, with all their incredible history, and players that want to come to play for United rather than being mercenaries who come just for the money, and all their experience in understanding football as opposed to moneybags city who just throw money at players until it sticks, have had so many flops in recent years
God that's depressing.
Makes it more annoying that Lukaku is smashing it up in Serie A
Exactly
The main difference in spending is that City have had one aim, ran by one man for the entirety of our squad building which has been built and rebuilt by 4 managers in that time. If we had a vision, as a club and not as per each manager, we would no way be in the predicament we have been in over recent times. Managers deserve blame too, but the lack of any kind of planning beyond Fergie is the main reason to blame.
Agree. Absolutely no structure or vision for the way the club wants to play regardless of who the manager is.
If we had been building with a vision in mind since SAF left with a coherent approach then we would be in a much better position than we are with the squad, at the very least the rebuild job we are doing would have been completed a lot more quickly.
A director of football has been a big miss for us. We’ve let one manager to the next spend millions on players the next manager doesn’t want and the cycle repeats itself when you have nobody overseeing the process and managing it.
I mean can you imagine a club of our size literally implements one rule; Finish top four or your sacked
That’s it! Just hire a manager, give him millions to spend, let him run the club pretty much top to bottom on the football side, zero management or structure to the recruitment (other than what Ole has implemented himself) and then just fire the manager if we don’t make top four.
Our owners and management structure above Ole are nothing more than absentee landlords!
United have been run incredibly poorly for years. Often their success has been despite the poor management (boardroom, not on field) not because of the management. Even the financial success has often been in spite of not because of who has been running the club - it's not difficult to get big money in sponsorship if you are Manchester United. They have taken life for granted for a long time now. Unless the culture at the very very top changes, I don't see how any of these problems get resolved
If Bruno has an off day, we have:
Pogba (Record fee for a midfielder, world cup winner. If it was the other guys that got Pogba, we would all be crying that they have destroyed football)
Mata (If he was on the other side people would be insisting that he is an elite player citing how great he was at Chelsea)
Martial (I’d love to be convinced that he is inferior to Sterling)
Van De Beek (went for more than Gundogan and was a key member of a mesmerizing CL semis Ajax team)
Cavani (world class striker without a doubt, though ageing)
Rashford (young promising star)
Fred
This excuse is not tenable, let’s fix our shit. If Lukaku was delivering, we wouldn’t let him go. Many people on this board were content with him leaving. I remember posting that Auba was the surer bet when Redcafe, Chelsea and United managers were fawning over Lukaku and then Morata.
Pogba (Record fee for a midfielder, world cup winner. If it was the other guys that got Pogba, we would all be crying that they have destroyed football)
Mata (If he was on the other side people would be insisting that he is an elite player citing how great he was at Chelsea)
Martial (I’d love to be convinced that he is inferior to Sterling)
Van De Beek (went for more than Gundogan and was a key member of a mesmerizing CL semis Ajax team)
Cavani (world class striker without a doubt, though ageing)
Rashford (young promising star)
Fred
This excuse is not tenable, let’s fix our shit. If Lukaku was delivering, we wouldn’t let him go. Many people on this board were content with him leaving. I remember posting that Auba was the surer bet when Redcafe, Chelsea and United managers were fawning over Lukaku and then Morata.
So just to be clear in a match where Palace probably had the best chances you then give them more space in midfield and arguably let them go on and win the game. I'm going to give Ole the benefit of the doubt in terms of not altering the shape. The WHOLE team ahead of the defenders were playing terribly. Everyone could see that. Bruno was misplacing balls, Cavani looked off fitness, Rashford running down blind alleys, Greenwood wasn't finding spaces, Matic was slow letting people run past him. The way the whole side was playing, if Ole had 'gone for it' in such a way as you wanted we would have lost. I know its about 'taking risks', but honestly I think him and the coaching staff were watching that and thinking this side can't switch it up a gear today.
All I wanted was him to try a youngster, just someone to come in and inject some energy into the side, but changing shape would have been suicide because the players didn't look like they could turn up the intensity at all.
This might sound dumb but the reason city can afford to bench these players time and again because their price tag is lower than 70 mil. You won't hear much noise from the media saying this 60M player is benched and all. Now take the like of Pogba, Bale, Coutinho etc who cost almost 100M, whenever they are benched you see a lot of discussion happening. It is a luxury to have two 70M players instead of one 150M player.
Superb post and nails it on all points as well
Yeah there is no doubt that Ole's man management off the pitch is on point and he has definitely improved things post Jose, however like you say he lacks so many of the important elements of a top manager and his unwillingness to change any of these things is what constantly frustrates me time and time again and I just cannot understand why. This board is just so bloody halfway house as well because they come out today backing Ole to the hilt has done but you just know when the summer comes out comes the plead poverty stuff all over again.
You need somebody to convince you of this?
Just purchase a sky subscription and watch the games as you must have missed them.
He’s been abysmal, through nothing but laziness, he’s been by a distance our worst performing player within the squad.
You’re proving my point.
One of those record signings was sold to fund the other, making £5m net. We needed both, we could only afford one.
The other has largely been an expensive mistake two managers have had hung around their necks like an albatross. Even allowing for his slightly improved performances recently, having to maximise our investment in Pogba has caused numerous problems
Just to reiterate - every club across Europe has this issue, bar City and maybe PSG
Oh, I was squarely in that boat too and quite a few others. I was definitely not keen on Morata and rather underwhelmed by Lukaku. Then when those of us who did not know he had no first touch realised that, most of us wanted him out. Don't mind him as a character, he's just not a player for a progressive style of football. And Auba went for a lot less money as well.
We outbid Madrid for Bale, we tried for Fabregas.... how was Moyes not backed ?
I meant “inferior” talent wise. While you may disagree I am convinced that there is nothing Sterling has achieved or is achieving in his career that Martial couldn’t have easily matched.
I agree with you that Sterling is heads and shoulders the better player now. I wouldn’t want to go into the detail but somehow Martial has not worked for us. I had been very patient but I’d love us to cash in now while there’s still some value left.
12 pages and no one mentions €44M for Nemanja Matic.
*I always use Transfermarkt for consistency to avoid "N. Ake costs nearly as much as Maguire's.
*I always use Transfermarkt for consistency to avoid "N. Ake costs nearly as much as Maguire's.
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Who the feck does palace have if Zaha has an off day? Come on enough with the bloody excuses. Third most expensive squad in the world, can't create a chance against West Brom.
Cavani and Telles have played quite a bit. The others are for the future.
Right now they do, last season they didn´t.
I like that this backfired and what’s coming out of it is the disparity in the quality of the managers.
Manchester City is a institution of the Qatari royal government. It is built for longetivity and prestige, just like their other government agencies. Manchester United on the other hand is a business operating in a quasi monopoly and still relatively free from market pressures, which allow us leeway for mediocrity.
I think the owner from Iraq.
Feck no.
Shaw pre-Ole was unfit, doesn't do the things he does now consistently.
Shaw now is two times the player he was, credit to Ole for not following CAF and got rid of him.
Remember Luke Shaw's thread during Mourinho's time? Fecking shambles.
UAE. Qatar owns PSG.
Why I dont want to give up on Ole is not because I think he is an exceptional manager -
It's the fact that we are being linked to players like Grealish, Sancho, Haaland, Kounde, Milenkovic, Rice etc.
The players we were linked with under Van Gaal & Mourinho was terrible (Schneiderlin, Willian, Perisic, Matic etc).
During this time it made it very obvious how much of a freedom managers may have to make United their own view with the players they want because the way we are run is by people that dont know the game aswell as not knowing United.
I'm not excited by Ole's tactics but I am excited to see the players he brings to United.
Whilst we wont get all, some of - Haaland, Sancho, Grealish, Kounde, Milenkovic, Rice mixing with Bruno, Rashford, Greenwood, Henderson, Pogba, VDB, Shaw, Wan Bissaka, and others makes me excited.
There is a fan managing United for once who knows what type of players is required for success at United.
It's why even if the success doesnt come - I will give Ole a season more to see who he will bring to United.
It's the fact that we are being linked to players like Grealish, Sancho, Haaland, Kounde, Milenkovic, Rice etc.
The players we were linked with under Van Gaal & Mourinho was terrible (Schneiderlin, Willian, Perisic, Matic etc).
During this time it made it very obvious how much of a freedom managers may have to make United their own view with the players they want because the way we are run is by people that dont know the game aswell as not knowing United.
I'm not excited by Ole's tactics but I am excited to see the players he brings to United.
Whilst we wont get all, some of - Haaland, Sancho, Grealish, Kounde, Milenkovic, Rice mixing with Bruno, Rashford, Greenwood, Henderson, Pogba, VDB, Shaw, Wan Bissaka, and others makes me excited.
There is a fan managing United for once who knows what type of players is required for success at United.
It's why even if the success doesnt come - I will give Ole a season more to see who he will bring to United.
It doesn't help when we could have had around 70 million in funds had we sold Henderson for 30-35 million and not brought van der beek but instead ole thought it was a good idea to bring both into the squad and sit them on the sidelines for a majority of the season and set their careers back and devalue their sell on fee, genius.
Very well said. Martial's attitude, body language, desire and most importantly, goal scoring, have all been off a pathetic nature. Schoolboy behavior. Especially goal scoring. This is his 6 th season with us . Played 166 league games , scored 55 goals. That works out at an average of 1 goal every 3 games. Most worrying, this season he's only scored 4 league goals. A true No. 9 , I very much doubt it. But still, Ole persists with him ? Baffling !