Alvaro Morata

Out of curiosity, and realistically, who would you prefer for the striker option this season? And why?
There are not many options available.

i would prefer to sort out our midfield first as this has been our biggest issue for the past 3/4 seasons.

Accordingly, if we want depth, I would go for Memphis and spend all what we have on midfield reinforcements.

If we get Memphis and if Ronaldo leaves, we would have Memphis / Martial for striker position. If desperate, Rashford and Elanga can play there. Also wouldn’t mind seeing Bruno playing as false 9.
 
Between De Gea, Heaton, Maguire, Lindelof, Varane, Fred, Eriksen and Ronaldo, we have enough players in that age range.

whichever way you frame it, buying a soon to be 30 year old as backup for our 38 year old want away striker who has 1 year left on his contract is bad business.

There is strikers out there though, 5 of last years top 7 have bought new strikers and the other club has sold 2 of them! While we have swung and miss at everyone from Brobbey to Arnautovic!

It’s a joke and there’s no excusing it.
  • Richarlison for 40m or whatever isn't good business.
  • Darwin might prove to be good for Liverpool but 100m for a player like him after just 1 season is insane.
  • Haaland had a release clause and we had no chance
  • Gabriel Jesus would never come to United due to the rivalry and had the Arteta link. Is what it is
Scamacca we should have been in for from what I heard, but feck knows if he's any good. After them? Sesko was quoted 50m. He's entirely unproven and likely wouldn't do much this year. There just aren't options out there. That's the reality for the striker position. So you do what you can. Morata on a loan with buy option would be great IMO. But it's likely a few year striker struggle that we will have given the lack of options out there. Any half decent player is 100m basically.

There's a lot to shit on our transfer window for. I don't think the striker position is one of them. The utter reluctance to sign a DM and RW are the 2 biggest issues for me, but the striker position? Its just a hard situation and we have to make the most out of it, and Morata would do quite well here for us overall.
 
Why isn't he the No.1 striker for A.Madrid? or at least No.2 after Joao Felix?

He is behind Felix, Correa, Cunha, and Griezmann.

Not good enough, hopefully nothing comes of these rumors.
 
Since we can't care less about toxic environments then I wonder why we don't sign icardi. He isn't worse then Rabiot on that front and unlike the French man icardi knows how to play Football
 
He coloured his hair red before the transfer fell off. He doesn't moan like other available strikers . He deserves to play in red for once.
 
  • Richarlison for 40m or whatever isn't good business.
  • Darwin might prove to be good for Liverpool but 100m for a player like him after just 1 season is insane.
  • Haaland had a release clause and we had no chance
  • Gabriel Jesus would never come to United due to the rivalry and had the Arteta link. Is what it is
Scamacca we should have been in for from what I heard, but feck knows if he's any good. After them? Sesko was quoted 50m. He's entirely unproven and likely wouldn't do much this year. There just aren't options out there. That's the reality for the striker position. So you do what you can. Morata on a loan with buy option would be great IMO. But it's likely a few year striker struggle that we will have given the lack of options out there. Any half decent player is 100m basically.

There's a lot to shit on our transfer window for. I don't think the striker position is one of them. The utter reluctance to sign a DM and RW are the 2 biggest issues for me, but the striker position? Its just a hard situation and we have to make the most out of it, and Morata would do quite well here for us overall.
To be fair, I think what’s frustrating me more is that as you said, we have way more important areas to fix. If Ronaldo is staying then why go for a stop gap striker? Why not put in the groundwork for a proper replacement next season? I can think of Osimhen, David and Schick off the top of my head but I’m not a European mega club with scouts all over the world.

we don’t even have a serviceable RB or defensive midfielder but we seem to be chasing after every sub par striker in football. I’m so confused
 
To be fair, I think what’s frustrating me more is that as you said, we have way more important areas to fix. If Ronaldo is staying then why go for a stop gap striker? Why not put in the groundwork for a proper replacement next season? I can think of Osimhen, David and Schick off the top of my head but I’m not a European mega club with scouts all over the world.

we don’t even have a serviceable RB or defensive midfielder but we seem to be chasing after every sub par striker in football. I’m so confused
Us signing a stop gap now doesn't stop us from going after one next summer... Ronaldo is either gone this summer or next. We are blatantly short of attackers even if he stays, so it's not a bad idea. We had 1 injury and had to play Eriksen with Ronaldo not being match fit. He's 37, Martial is injury prone. A forward is needed.

Also - the hope is that we can just get multiple deals done, but here we are. I honestly would be quite happy with Rabiot and Morata in the next few weeks. If would address 2 big issues in our squad, a DM finally and a forward like Morata would work well for us. Ideally, we could also add De Jong to that, but that's unlikely. Rabiot and Morata and I think we could get a decent season going and at least not have a massive hole in the team (or have hopes that the holes are addressed).
 
Three center forward is one too many I think.
Both martial and Ronaldo can cover wide, it would be 5 players for 3 positions which is the right amount. Given Ronaldo is 37 and Martial as injury prone as he is... I'm ok with it.
 
To be fair, I think what’s frustrating me more is that as you said, we have way more important areas to fix. If Ronaldo is staying then why go for a stop gap striker? Why not put in the groundwork for a proper replacement next season? I can think of Osimhen, David and Schick off the top of my head but I’m not a European mega club with scouts all over the world.

we don’t even have a serviceable RB or defensive midfielder but we seem to be chasing after every sub par striker in football. I’m so confused

That’s what we revert to when our head confirms a market is dead.

There’s nothing out there.. if there was.. believe me.. for a club of our level we as fans would know about it.

Maybe we tie up a future potential striker in the next year or two but for this season I don’t a problem in Morata. Chelsea have zero strikers and there looking to get Auba.. that pretty much says it all.
 
You wouldn't want a player who starts for Spain, who has played for Real, Atletico and Juve? What has that Stuttgart player done on a higher level?
He didn’t do to well at Chelsea though if I remember. The other guys a bit younger aswell so we’d get more years out of him. We always seem to go for the older strikers.
 
These constant discussions about striker position make me so angry with Mason. Despicable man but he would be the answer.
 
Between De Gea, Heaton, Maguire, Lindelof, Varane, Fred, Eriksen and Ronaldo, we have enough players in that age range.

whichever way you frame it, buying a soon to be 30 year old as backup for our 38 year old want away striker who has 1 year left on his contract is bad business.

There is strikers out there though, 5 of last years top 7 have bought new strikers and the other club has sold 2 of them! While we have swung and miss at everyone from Brobbey to Arnautovic!

It’s a joke and there’s no excusing it.
I think what people are failing to realise is United have a limited budget to play with.

The lack of Champions League, falling commercial income and payments from previous transfers all mean our budget is severely reduced.

We need a striker, however it needs to be a striker that will allow us to spend the main bulk of our budget on a midfielder (FdJ), hence getting cold feet over Sesko, hence going for Marko and now Morata, players who are low cost and are happy to not play every game.

So it's not a joke, and there's no need to excuse United prioritising a position we are in major need of, it's just basic economics.
 
That’s what we revert to when our head confirms a market is dead.

There’s nothing out there.. if there was.. believe me.. for a club of our level we as fans would know about it.

Maybe we tie up a future potential striker in the next year or two but for this season I don’t a problem in Morata. Chelsea have zero strikers and there looking to get Auba.. that pretty much says it all.
But it’s gonna leave us with 3 strikers, that’s to many. The move just doesn’t make sense.

There are striker options out there. Whenever people bring up individual examples like Scammaca or Richarlison the reply is always “they’re not Ten hag style strikers” but looking at the list of strikers We’ve attempted to buy, from Werner to Arnautovic, he obviously doesn’t have a set style in mind for a striker and we are just throwing shit at the wall.

A loan with an option I can probably “begrudgingly” accept. If we pay the 35million euros quoted we’re insane.
 
Both martial and Ronaldo can cover wide, it would be 5 players for 3 positions which is the right amount. Given Ronaldo is 37 and Martial as injury prone as he is... I'm ok with it.
And only Sancho being any decent on the right among the five.
 
But it’s gonna leave us with 3 strikers, that’s to many. The move just doesn’t make sense.

There are striker options out there. Whenever people bring up individual examples like Scammaca or Richarlison the reply is always “they’re not Ten hag style strikers” but looking at the list of strikers We’ve attempted to buy, from Werner to Arnautovic, he obviously doesn’t have a set style in mind for a striker and we are just throwing shit at the wall.

A loan with an option I can probably “begrudgingly” accept. If we pay the 35million euros quoted we’re insane.

That’s not too many. It’s a long season and one of the strikers is 37/38.

I don’t think it came down to style. It came down to price. Maybe Richarlison would of worked but he would also have been our RW/LW option. We decided to go with Antony.
 
I'd only get him on loan with an option to buy.

If he does ok you potentially keep him when Ronaldo leaves so you have something until you identify whoever's going to be striker long term.
 
Yeah it'd be nice to find a striker who is a proven scorer and holds up play well and links up well. Unfortunately, there is no Robin Van Persie Regen alive right now. Lewandowski, Benzema are the only high scorer and link up/hold up strikers in the world currently. Gabriel Jesus is one who is good all around but hasn't proven to be a high scorer yet. Morata is like that. He has a lot of excellent qualities, but doesn't have the good scoring rate. You have to be realistic with what options are available and what we have/lack in our team now, both Rabiot and Morata would be good signings that could help us a lot.

I guess time will show mate.

The board are putting ETH and us in this position when the cant get transfers done early like usual, not much to choose from in the market.:nervous:
 
I'd only get him on loan with an option to buy.

If he does ok you potentially keep him when Ronaldo leaves so you have something until you identify whoever's going to be striker long term.
Think he only has 1 year left on his contract
 
Surely in a situation like this we revert to our scouting where there must be 4 or 5 options for ETH to pick from. I’d have thought there’d be a young striker somewhere on the planet with massive potential and the attributes that we are looking for!
 
His hold up play is extremely brilliant. Just watch the Spain matches and why he is starting for Enrique. Yes, he won't score much but I believe he will transform the team completely.

Ronaldo, Bruno, Eriksen, Sancho and Rashford can all share the scoring responsibilities.
 
His hold up play is extremely brilliant. Just watch the Spain matches and why he is starting for Enrique. Yes, he won't score much but I believe he will transform the team completely.

Ronaldo, Bruno, Eriksen, Sancho and Rashford can all share the scoring responsibilities.

Hmm, not when he was at Chelsea.
 
I really hope this transfer holds water, our two most productive players over the last 3 seasons have been Rashford and Fernandes, both Rashford and Fernandes seem to play better when Martial is on the field, So it would only be logical for the club to buy a forward with similar attributes to Martial I.e. Morata.
 
If we are going to turn it around, it will not be with signings like this. We need young players with potential who can be coached up, not declining players who weren't good enough in their prime.
 
Imagine being told at the start of summer that our main attacking targets would be Arnaoutovic and Morata.

Makes you feel sick.