Anthony Elanga | Forest watch

It's funny that ragnick was pretty high on elanga, maybe he could see the potential in him, I always thought he may have not been the best manager but he probably would have built us our best post fergie suited for the premier league.
 
Goal contributions this season in the PL:

Elanga: 10
Rashford: 6
Garnacho: 5
Martial: 2
Højlund: 1
Antony: 0
 
The problem is that the current board is trying to achieve success just by splashing money on the transfer market rather than long term planning. It's obvious that 99.99% of raw youth talents won't start playing like pros overnight, they need to earn gametime experience. The rest of 0.01% that starts immediatly doing amazing stuff on a regular basis at a very young age are usually extremely talented generational talents like Rooney, Quaresma (even though he didn't achieved his full potencial), Ronaldo, Beckham, Romário, Zlatan, etc, etc. But those are the exception rather than the norm.

The norm is you usually need to mature your talent: two great examples from Portugal: Ricardo Carvalho was loaned out to really crap teams, same goes to Rui Costa who spent loan spells in anonymous clubs like Fafe and etc. Even Harry Kane had to mature to become the amazing striker he is showing us since a few seasons ago, if we rewind a few seasons back a lot of people would not consider him the amazing striker he has become.
 
What a dumb decision to let him go. Had a breakthrough season, then never got a chance and was sold. Twice the player of Antony.
 
FujiVice said:
What a dumb decision to let him go. Had a breakthrough season, then never got a chance and was sold. Twice the player of Antony.
Click to expand...
He wasn't and still isn't good enough to play on a top team, the fact that Antony has been a terrible failure doesn't change that.
 
Even without taking transfer fee into account, we would have been better off with Elanga at right-wing than Antony. Then consider if we spent that Antony money on something else.
 
What are the conditions of those add-ons in his deal?
 
Watch Amad thread with other team, because someone keeps favoring Antony.
 
He wasn’t good enough. Signing a terrible winger doesn’t change that.
 
He wasn’t a bad player but wasn’t good enough for Manchester Utd or where we want to be. Good to see him doing well though and being productive but I think he regularly put out weaker displays than even Antony in a Utd shirt. The problem wasn’t getting rid, it was selling for such a low fee. City or chelsea would have got £30-£40 million.
 
Awful pass from the back from him and Guimaraes ends up scoring the 2-3 for Newcastle
 
He was playing a lot more than he should under Ralf and that seems to still stick with people as he wasn’t ready then. Last season was his first proper season of first team football, so it’s no surprise he looks good now. Still, it was going to be tough for him to break through with us behind Rashford and Sancho on the same wing so selling him wasn’t a bad decision. We are notoriously poor at getting value for our players, so that’s going to sting.
 
Glad it’s working for him at Forest. Seems a great lad, but didn’t show much for us. Terrible price, though. Ineos are certainly right about the mess of our transfer business.
 
15-20 was a fair price to me. Certainly at the 20m point. Do people expect 20m players to be completely useless or something?
 
We are absolutely shambolic as a club. 85m for the Brazilian roundabout while shipping out a rapid young player for under 20m with PL experience.
 
Rozay said:
15-20 was a fair price to me. Certainly at the 20m point. Do people expect 20m players to be completely useless or something?
Click to expand...

Very much agree with you. With the games he played for us 20m was a good price. Even today I believe it is a good price. I would be very happy if we can sell 2-3 youth players for that amount every year... 20m is really not a small amount guys.
 
Rozay said:
15-20 was a fair price to me. Certainly at the 20m point. Do people expect 20m players to be completely useless or something?
Click to expand...

yes. united normally pay four times that for the same outcome.
 
Withnail said:
He was never going to be good enough for us, we got decent money and he's found his level. I don't see what the fuss about.
Click to expand...

I'm glad most people seem to be thinking along these lines.

In a Fergie United, he may have been a decent squad player but that's about it.

Also its one thing scoring goals on the counter for Forest, it's another having the ball and having to create every time.
 
Withnail said:
He was never going to be good enough for us, we got decent money and he's found his level. I don't see what the fuss about.
Click to expand...
The fuss is we’ve spent 160m on Sancho and Antony who are also never going to be good enough for us. Antony will be a bench player and leave when his inflated contract runs out. Elanga by all accounts seems more effective than either with his pace coming off the bench, which is another damning indictment of how we’ve conducted transfers over the last few years.
 
We sold an absolute unit of an athlete capable of going toe to toe against the quickest players in PL who was 20 y.0 for 15m, replaced him with a spinny boy lacking pace for 85m and rubbed our hands in the dark saying "hehehe we got them this time".

Thank you John Martuogh.
 
redNATION said:
The fuss is we’ve spent 160m on Sancho and Antony who are also never going to be good enough for us. Antony will be a bench player and leave when his inflated contract runs out. Elanga by all accounts seems more effective than either with his pace coming off the bench, which is another damning indictment of how we’ve conducted transfers over the last few years.
Click to expand...
Agree with most of this

Bottmline:

1. We should have definitely sold Elanga, because he was not United level. Anybody arguing with this is just statistics sucker, who doesn't look or understand football BUT WE SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN MORE MONEY FOR HIM!!!!

We will not be able to buy anybody for 15M, let alone somebody who can score goals in premier league, so how is it suddenly OK that we sell a "premier league proven" player for such peanuts amount? This is not just Elanga, it's everywhere: acceptable prices are magically 2-4 times different when we are buying vs when we are selling. That is bullshit

2. We Payed 2-3 times more for Antony than anybody would i.e. what he was worth. And we jacked up his salary 10x for no reason. Both of those were criminal decision.

Also Antony didn't work out. Now that does happen and anybody who thinks every transfer, esp from other leagues will work out, doesnt know what he or she is talking about. But him flopping would not stink if we had paid 35M for him and he was on 80 or 100K/week salary. That is the point

3. We overpaid to lesser extent for Sancho, because he was seriously hyped when we bought him, so nobody would have sold him to us for much less. But the crime there was - we should not have been desperate. We were the only ones buying into the hype. Nobody was killing themselves buying him. And we should have redflagged his disciplinary issues since they were known. Never buy players who bring bad behavior, even if they can play well, unless you can manage their behavior. We could not
 
People saying he was never good enough or never was going to be good enough are wrong. He's good enough to play a part for a good team, and he's likely not the finished article at this point of his career either.

However, it wasn't a wrong decision to sell him. Neither would it have been a wrong decision to keep him. I feel like some people want to find problems everywhere, even when there aren't any.

The true issue was spending 80 million on an inferior player to replace him. Admittedly, few of us would've claimed that Elanga is the better player at that time.
 
Last edited:
Rojofiam said:
People saying he was never good enough or never was going to be good enough are wrong. He's good enough to play a part for a good team, and he's likely not the finished article at this point of his career either.

However, it wasn't a wrong decision to sell him. Neither would it have been a wrong decision to keep him. I feel like some people want to find problems everywhere, even when there aren't any.

The true issue was spending 80 million on an inferior player to replace him. Admittedly, few of us would've claimed that Elanga is the better player at that time.
Click to expand...
Just too sensible of a post. Hindsight
 
It was the correct decision to sell him, and no he's not suddenly good enough to play for a club wanting to win trophies. Just the usual (bitching/told you so) in hindsight routine going on here
 
Withnail said:
He was never going to be good enough for us, we got decent money and he's found his level. I don't see what the fuss about.
Click to expand...

Some of our fans genuinely still bring up Welbeck being sold. So, I expect this to rumble on for a decade or so. They can only count themselves lucky they don't support Chelsea with the sheer amount of good-to-great players that they've sold.

It's great to see Elanga doing well but, he looked pretty poor anytime he played for us.
 
Elanga is good professional, and has working habits that will bring him to the top level, probably contract in the future with one of the top 8 teams where he will get playing time. He is not on that level yet, but this seasons proves he is already solid PL player at 21, so it is very hard to say now he will never be good enough for United level. Players develop at different time, especially if they are hard working.

Of course, paying Antony above the value has nothing to do with Elanga and it is completely on Ten Hag as terrible mistake. Nothing to do with Elanga. The only good thing for us is that him, Anders and Garner proved that our kids can play on PL level which will hopefully help us getting better money for academy graduates in the future.
 
Withnail said:
He was never going to be good enough for us, we got decent money and he's found his level. I don't see what the fuss about.
Click to expand...
Then you dont understand what building a squad is about. ETH is not the first manager to do this, LVG sold for example both Evans and Keane and then bought Blind (not capable of dealing with physicality of PL) and Rojo (not good enough). Then Mou bought Bailly (clown) and Lindelof (also not capable of dealing with physicality of PL), then Ole made Maguire the most expensive CB in PL and bought Varanne. So we sold 2 youth products for modest feels (, Keane £2m; Evans £6m, Ferguson reported as 'speachless' at the time) and then go and spend over £200m and massive wages on at least 6 shiny new CBs, none of them good enough. The irony is Evans is back and looking an accomplished CB whose good on the ball at the age of 35, Keane has been up and down but for a period was playing for England. The point is not that the likes of Evans and Keane were going to win us the PL, but there is no point selling them unless its for truly outstanding players. Evans has this seaon kept Varanne out of the team.

So when it comes to Elanga, he has shown that he can score and create assists and chances in one of the worst teams in the PL. Rangnick who has an eye for talent picked out Elanga, ETH clearly didnt rate him and preferred to play Weghorst over him (unbelievable), then sold him to buy Antony. So for a net £70m spend we have a demonstrably worse right winger who has zero goals and zero assits in PL, whilst Elanaga has 5 goals and 6 assits for the team in the relegation zone. The irony is that Elanga looks really dangerous on the sort of fast breaks that it seems would suit the current United set up. So again, the point is not that Elanga would get us to challenge for PL, but unless there is a truly elite replacement we can get we should give our youth players more time and opportunities and conserve funds for the star players and stop allowing each new manager to buy the latest shiny toy who proves to be useless.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.