I’m done fighting this one.
My body is ready.
My body is ready.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka | The Ornacle speaks: It is done.
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
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AWB & De Ligt. My body is ready.
Ricardo Periera played few games as winger and those won't be counted for this stat. When he played as FB he completed 51 dribbles compared to 61 by AWB.
Fair enough.
The lenghts some people go to raise non-existant question marks...
This is a transfer I'll be insanely annoyed if we don't get over the line. I do think we will though.
Real Madrid have signed 5 players and spent 300 million euros in the time it's taken us to buy a championship player / great prospect and have a bid rejected by Palace.
What are Woodward and Judge doing?
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This is something I often wonder. Why are Real so much more efficient at this?
Probably because they are driven for success
Just wait till we sign a DOF. At this point he might be signed at any time (probably 4 years)
And the young prospects that they sign arent crazy prices. We always claimed that there is a United Tax. Surely RM pays that 'tax' too considering that they are the biggest club in the world with guaranteed income from the Spanish League.
Unless that surcharge/tax is really something else.
I assume you're aware that Real spent about 121 Mn euros all told on Vinicius Jr. and Rodrygo? Not crazy at all, eh?
Also, let's see. How many big signings have Real Madrid - the biggest draw in the world - made in the last few years? Not too many! They've also been chasing Hazard for over a year! It's not like there are no issues. They've paid shedloads of money, have won CL 4 times this decade, have Zidane as manager and have historically been the biggest attraction for most players in world football. Hardly surprising they're better than us at closing deals. Has always been the case.
How about other clubs though? Not seen any other clubs make major moves yet. Indeed, even Barca have only de Jong to show for right now. It's fine to worry and fret, but let's not go overboard with the narrative.
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The Spanish big two just have much bigger pull. They have players desperate to join them. It makes transfers a lot easier.
Because they have actual football people doing football stuff. We on the other hand let accountants and investment bankers without an ounce of footballing knowledge handle them.
This is the same reporter that first broke the Daniel James story.
It’s easier when players are jumping over themselves to play for you.
Yea. It helps when you have the gorgeous weather to go with selling any type of project.
We are now limited to what we can offer players. Previously it was almost guarantee of trophies and world wide adulation. This is no longer the case.
They have much bigger pull because they are run much better than us.
£20m for one of the best and most talented fullbacks in the league
£30m to avoid seeing Ashley Young on the pitch again
£50m in total
Looks like fair value from our viewpoint.
£30m to avoid seeing Ashley Young on the pitch again
£50m in total
Looks like fair value from our viewpoint.
They had a much bigger pull even when we were well run. As football clubs they are just far more ambitious than us, and have a much higher potential.
30 per cent concentrated power of will
5 per cent pleasure
50 per cent pain
100 per cent reason Ashley Young will never play again
While I agree to some extent, it's debatable and never like it is today. They always had a bigger pull for South Americans/Latino unquestionably, today that is to a different level, and that is mostly down to how incompetently we are being run.
Not defending Woodward or Judge here, but Real Madrid are in a much better position. These deals are not done in 2 weeks, 3 weeks 4 weeks. They can be but unlikely. Targets identified and wheels put in motion on players straight after Xmas. Madrid have the luxury of being the Champions League and well errr being Real Madrid. No doubt we had multiple targets for multiple positions given we had Champions League or Europa League. Make no bones about it, Europa is a lot less attractive so I expect getting those deals over the line will prove to be harder. Agree we should have seen more action by the way
They have fecked up the last 3/4 windows and are now scrambling and panic buying this summer. Compared to us they look good but how many of their side would get into Liverpool / City / Juve / PSG / Barca 11 even after a 300m splurge? They are struggling to get rid of aging deadwood that are on eyewatering contracts as well.
They even fecked up replacing Ronaldo worse than us.
The times when the main job of the FB was to defend are long gone. Name one top FB in a CL winning club in the last few years who is a better defender than an attacker. All the fantastic FBs we have seen in the last few years - Alba, Marcelo, Alves, Evra are all very good attacking FBs who can do a job defensively. Even the best FBs on the PL in the last few years - Rose, Walker, TAA, Robertson are all very good going forward and OK defensively. The reason why Pep decided to spend 50 mill plus on Walker and Mendy was not because how good they were defensively, but because how good they were going forward.
That is what the modern game demands- FBs providing width with wingers acting as inside forwards. We want to implement those modern footballing styles in our club but here we are, about to pay a world record fee for a defensive RB who is meh on the ball and not great going forward - the exact opposite of the qualities required of a modern FB.
When AWB is playing for CP, his technical deficiencies are not be very evident as he is not always expected to get up the field or to dribble through and provide width to the attack. But when he’s at a top club, he will be seeing way more of the ball and will be expected to do more with it that than just tackle and clear. That’s when he will struggle. It will be a bit like playing Kante as an advanced CM, he can do a job but is nowhere near as effective as he was when his job was to win the ball and provide it to the other Ms who are better on the ball than he is. Being good on the ball is something very important for a top footballer and AWB is sadly not very good on the ball. Also, we are planning on winning the league and you don’t win the league by defending all the time, so why do we want a super defensive FB? You want to shore up your defence? Get a proper DM and a WC CB and coach them properly to keep proper shape. If you don’t have proper defensive shape, a whole back line of WC defenders can’t help you
That is what the modern game demands- FBs providing width with wingers acting as inside forwards. We want to implement those modern footballing styles in our club but here we are, about to pay a world record fee for a defensive RB who is meh on the ball and not great going forward - the exact opposite of the qualities required of a modern FB.
When AWB is playing for CP, his technical deficiencies are not be very evident as he is not always expected to get up the field or to dribble through and provide width to the attack. But when he’s at a top club, he will be seeing way more of the ball and will be expected to do more with it that than just tackle and clear. That’s when he will struggle. It will be a bit like playing Kante as an advanced CM, he can do a job but is nowhere near as effective as he was when his job was to win the ball and provide it to the other Ms who are better on the ball than he is. Being good on the ball is something very important for a top footballer and AWB is sadly not very good on the ball. Also, we are planning on winning the league and you don’t win the league by defending all the time, so why do we want a super defensive FB? You want to shore up your defence? Get a proper DM and a WC CB and coach them properly to keep proper shape. If you don’t have proper defensive shape, a whole back line of WC defenders can’t help you
Real Madrid are owned by their members so profits are invested back into the team
Manchester Utd are owned by parasitic American uber-capitalists who understand nothing about football and who care only about the bottom line
Simple.
Agree with all your points, but at this point, I would prefer the tea lady to seeing Valencia and Young at RB. So I refuse to get all pessimistic and assume that whomever we get can only be an improvement to the eyesore performances we have been seeing in that position.
He also got an interview with Zaha recently, hopefully he's on it.
When Guardiola spent £50m on Walker I remember a lot of people laughing because he was seen as technically limited, not a modern attacking full back, over-reliant on physical attributes etc. Since then he has played more minutes than anyone apart from their GK in a team that has utterly wrecked the league.
It's true there is a general trend towards contemporary full backs being strong attackers but using that trend to say that all full backs must be strong attackers is a logical fallacy. It's the same as someone saying that there is a trend towards attackers being hard workers due to high pressing systems therefore Messi shouldn't be near a top team because he is one of the worst players in Europe when it comes to pressing/running when his team aren't in possession. You make exceptions for players that are weak in some areas if they excel in others, and Wan-Bissaka does.
It's also a mistake that everyone makes, myself included, to judge a transfer in isolation. I think a lot of people are against the idea of us signing Wan-Bissaka because they think about our team last season, remember how useless we were at attacking down the right, and therefore want us to sign an attacking right back to fix that problem. But signing a right winger would also fix that problem and, depending on the tactics we use, other players we sign, a right back with Wan-Bissaka's attacking qualities (excellent pace, good dribbling) might suit better than a right back who is more of a passer/crosser.
It's true there is a general trend towards contemporary full backs being strong attackers but using that trend to say that all full backs must be strong attackers is a logical fallacy. It's the same as someone saying that there is a trend towards attackers being hard workers due to high pressing systems therefore Messi shouldn't be near a top team because he is one of the worst players in Europe when it comes to pressing/running when his team aren't in possession. You make exceptions for players that are weak in some areas if they excel in others, and Wan-Bissaka does.
It's also a mistake that everyone makes, myself included, to judge a transfer in isolation. I think a lot of people are against the idea of us signing Wan-Bissaka because they think about our team last season, remember how useless we were at attacking down the right, and therefore want us to sign an attacking right back to fix that problem. But signing a right winger would also fix that problem and, depending on the tactics we use, other players we sign, a right back with Wan-Bissaka's attacking qualities (excellent pace, good dribbling) might suit better than a right back who is more of a passer/crosser.
That's setting the bar very low isn't it. And it's not that difficult a bar to clear because literally any RB we have been linked with will e an improvement over Young and Val. But the thing is, we are paying upwards of 56 mill (which IIRC is the fee City paid for Mendy) for a better defensive and English version of Velencia (IMO). How much will that improve us especially since it looks like we won't be signing a RW with Pepe turning us down and Sancho having doubt about the move. So I guess it's going to be another year seeing our RB passing it back or being absolutely clueless after crossing the half way mark. I really really hope that's not the case though because that would mean spending about 80 million in RBs in two years and ending up with a better defensive version of Valencia or almost back to where we started
Can you imagine if one of our players was sent out on loan to Cambridge and was sent back like AWB was due to being raw as as a winger? People here would have wrote him off in no time.
Credit to Hodgson for playing him as a fullback and recognising his huge potential.
Credit to Hodgson for playing him as a fullback and recognising his huge potential.
Don't worry, that will be used to slate AWB in just under a year's time.
Completely disagree, just because he doesn't bomb up the wing for Palace doesn't mean he can't do it, the lad was a forward and a winger before being converted to a fullback. I'm very excited by this potential signing and I suggest for those that doubt his capabilities, stop spouting pointless stats and actually watch him play for the the u21's next week.
I can't believe how quickly everyone just forgot about Dalot. Is another young RB really necessary? A reminder that Trent was 18/19 when Liverpool gave him a chance with a solid run of games.
Furthermore, Dalot, although he played infrequently, has one of the most successful cross percentages in the premier league.
I have a sneaky feeling AWB would be solid defensively, but would gradually frustrate the fanbase down the line with his attacking play.
Furthermore, Dalot, although he played infrequently, has one of the most successful cross percentages in the premier league.
I have a sneaky feeling AWB would be solid defensively, but would gradually frustrate the fanbase down the line with his attacking play.
Not a fan, but it will be great finally having pace at RB again.
It's not a question of forgetting Dalot but of numbers in the squad. Valencia is gone, Darmian is almost certainly leaving and please God Ashley Young will be gone next summer. We need a RB and we are defensively a bit shit to put it mildly. AWB can be our starter, Dalot can continue to develop without the pressure of having to be perfect and if down the line Dalot and later Laird prove to be what we want on the right side we will still be able to sell AWB for at least what we paid for him as he is a good player who has at least 10 years ahead of him.
Also Dalot is not good enough defensively as it stands.
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