Jeez I think the purpose of this thread got lost about two pages ago, has just turned into why aren't fans protesting thus minority ownership more
Aurelien Tchouameni | signs new contract til 2031, to be official after the World Cup
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
- Start date
Thanks. That was a nice read.
However the fall of Italian football was due to tv money, fan interest, poor stadium infrastructure etc (does that ring a bell). Not to mention products like the EPL.
It’s like talking about WCW’s demise and ignore WWF(WWE).
There is parallels their with Manchester United being sensible in spending, because whilst teams like City and Chelsea can “cook” the books, we always seem to be held under a different standard and other clubs tend to not want to play with us like that (blame it on our previous success).
I’m pretty sure if we could spend £80m on Tchouameni whilst giving him £350k a week we would. I mean it wasn’t too long ago we would have done that.
The problem is.. when you spend years not winning the major honours and being a yo yo club in the UCL.. you tend not to generate as much money as your big stadium and prestigious name would allow.
If you actually paid attention to your review of Serie A. You can see how the club is ensure we build for future success.
I said Santos doesn’t move the needle when you’re signing Ederson. I also said if we didn’t sign Ederson it would have been much more attractive as I like the idea of signing him previously.
You’ll have to send me my Tielemans comment as I don’t remember even talking about him on here.
Poor stadium infrastructure and money issues. That certainly not the case for us right? The last time Manchester United recorded a net annual profit was in 2019 when we made a measly 19m profit. Since then we've recorded back to back loss. We're 1.3b in debt, our stadium is rotting which means we'll need another 3b to build a new stadium, the time of cheap debt is over and the Glazers will soon be eligible to take their dividends once again. Our ownership is lead by two groups of people who had been running football clubs to the ground. INEOS had made a horrible job at Lausanne and OGC Nice and they have between 15B and 18B debt with an annual repayment said to be around 1.8b. The least said about the Glazers the better.
The chickens are coming to roost mate. It might not be this year or the next but its inevitable and if you're thinking that we're too big to drown then think again. Milan thought the same and look were they are today. This is a bigger club then we are in terms of honors. Maldini on his own had won almost twice the CL trophies our club won in its entire history
Now compare the excuses, the decisions taken and the gradual reduction in expectations both in terms of transfers, performance and expectations. Ask yourself would you be happy if somebody came to you few months ago and told you that our CM rebuilt is made up of a Chelsea squad player and a 29 year old injury prone player we refused to sign....twice?
And for the record I made my peace with our decline mostly because I can see the signs and I can take the hint. I think the signings we made make sense given our circumstances. That's what we can probably afford. What irks me big time is the lack of honesty of it all. We kept fueling the Anderson's rumors despite knowing that we can't afford him and we still have client journalists pushing the Tchouameni deal despite knowing that he is set to sign a new contract. But there again if those incompetent and leeches would admit that they own an asset they can't really afford then they'll probably be riots up until they'll sell it us. So the club has to push the illusion that we're a Real Madrid while buying as if we're Aston Villa.
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We really needed a morale boost like this ahead of the new season, so may as well just accept where we are then is what you are saying. It's not our fault that these damn yankee leeches priced out INEOS and that fake sheikh for a full sale. Anyway getting it back on topic we would have walked away ages ago if we thought there was no chance whatsoever of being able to fund this deal
The club seem to have learnt when to raise expectations, how to maintain it and how to get us were they want us. We conveniently got linked to Anderson after we failed from signing semenyo which was then followed by amorim's dismissal. That lowered the criticism towards the club as we started to focus on the summer ahead. Then summer hit and expectations were gradually toned down with Fernandes then tchouameni, Scott and voila Santos and tielemans were at the door.. At this point even the most negative of united fans sees Scott as a marquee signing and consider Tyler Adams as a viable option. Scott was once considered as the best option in the cheap 3rd CM category ahead the likes of ederson and baleba
I strongly believe that If ederson didn't fail his medical then we wouldn't have any of this tchouameni nonsense
I am still criticising the club, maybe just you know take a look at that post I just made in club ownership thread
I never suggested otherwise mate. I am simply saying what I think is going on behind the scenes.
PS I butted into your argument with sunny jim. For the record I fully agree with you which comes to no surprise considering that I usually agree with you on most topics
You know why we're one of the most marketable clubs in the world? Because it has a huge reach, due to it's fans.Yes sure because that affected Arsenal so badly for like 2 decades.
This is literally what Goldbridge said and it's the most dumb thing ever.
Who cares if the fans don't know who we are?
You do realise that bloody Fernandes is like 21 years old and calling us & Bruno his dream club at one point.
we got players like Heaven, Obi & Thompson switching clubs from big clubs to join us under the age of 19. To think this club has no pull is rubbish. I couldn't give a crap if an 8 year old boy doesn't support us along as the professional footballers do. We will win the title again and the supporters will instantly start to grow. Liverpool showed that spending stupid money still only led them to 4th after winning the title last year.
We had the 2 most marketable players in the whole world of the last 20 years in my opinion with Beckham & Ronaldo - United are the world's most marketable club; our presence isn't going nowhere.
We aren't brainwashed. We had our first proper transfer window after SAF retired/15 years which was a breath of fresh air; half of us are calm and composed that the last transfer window could be replicated again.
So far the transfer window has been good but not complete.
We have seen so many transfer windows where fans are agitated and angry that we are not signing players only for us to sign 3 players in the last 3 weeks.
It's nothing new. It's funny how fans put all the blame on Woodward or whoever for signing Pogba, Sancho, Antony, Ronaldo when the fans wanted them in the firstplace.
For the first time it feels like we are trying something different with our recruitment, our wage structure, our youth development and investment, our data analytics and even with things like our players personalities. If you can't see any of that then your just as brainwashed as me.
If we spend 200m; our fans would rather spend 200m on 2 CM because its deemed more value than buying 4 players at the cost of 50m each to fill out our whole squad.
It's unlikely but there's a good possibility we may still sign a 3rd CM, a LB, a LCB, a Back up striker having already signed 2 CM's a goalkeeper and a LW.
If we had spent 200m on 2CM we would have no ability to sign anyone else. A cost of a transfer doesn't replicate how good a player is or how useful he is to us.
Future fans are very important to maintain and even further that reach. It's why the club tours all over the world for pre season to try and tap into new markets etc. We have had great success with it in Asia and the US and are a very popular name and club there now due in no small part to the tours.
I won't argue against the rest of your post though. I actually agree with the way the club has handled the window thus far, its refreshing to see, but I'll hold off proper judgement when its over and we have hopefully filled more gaps.
Tchoumeni will be not coming to us and when it’s official he’s signed a new contract this place will be chaos
There’s about 12 pages of posts in the last week
Counterintuitively it’s probably because there’s actually nothing to talk about.
The recruitment team which refused to sign him twice were fecking idiots, so I'm taking that as a vote in favour.
If we don't make a few more strong signings by the end of the window then I'll deem it a failure. But however you try to denigrate our two CM signings (squad player, injury prone blah blah) I think they both add important attributes we were lacking and I'm genuinely excited to see how they transform our midfield play this season. Having CMs who can pass forward reliably is something which I've been waiting a while for and I'm glad we've signed players who can do it.
Great read across the posts. However, United are in luck - the league it is in is now financially the dominant league, just like Serie A was in its day. As you mentioned before, the drop in Series A started with the weaker teams, followed by the stronger ones. The Peemier League is currently in an up-cycle, and we are lucky in that.
United though is in a down cycle, our revenue has increased marginally while the rest of the league have seen a boom. We have likely the largest set of inactive fans of any team. With some progress we can reactive them, but that requires success.
Finally, I don’t think our current owners are that cheap to be honest, we saw them splash a good amount last year, bided for Baleba £70m after that and also £70m for Seymeno. However, this Summer’s inflation has come as a chock for them (and me!). To think we could get three Of the best wingers in the league for 60-70m last season (Seymeno), and now £100m is quoted for anyone who has kicked a ball professionally is a crazy inflation. I personally think the change from PSR to SCR have played a massive role as apparently it will take 3 years for it to full kick in, giving teams the option to go all-in now and balance the book later. But also, no team is under immediate pressure to sell for SCR reasons like teams were under FFP.
Probably
Which is absolutely nothing when it comes to transfer muppetry on this forum. It’s barely a blip compared to past transfer threads.
Completely agree and well said. There's an incredible amount of doom mongering simply because we haven't spent big on a single player. Some are more interested in the spend than the player.
For comparison - the FDJ transfer thread closed with 1848 pages. We're at 137 on Tchouameni.
Agreed. I look at our midfield signings and think of the supply line our forwards will now be getting. I'm excited to see that. We know Sesko/Cunha/Mbeumo/Bruno/Dorgu/Amad can score goals. Having midfielders who can make smart passes to them might help them score even more goals.
I agree, he is very much a mourinho midfielder, isnt coming.
Think camavinga told no room for him already and when rodri comes he has to move.
Not worried about his loss of form as think he is a very good player with qualities be very goof for us....but the injuries is bit of a concern.
MY hunch is tchouaneni no, baleba brighton possibly over price still....we get camavinga...think thats what the ckub are assesing and waiting for....actually want baleba most of the three personally
Yeah INEOS have closed off leaks so nothing to do on this but speculate and hope something happens unexpectedly.
I am not denigrating anyone. Santos is indeed a former Chelsea squad player and Tielemans is indeed 29, he's injury prone and we refused to sign him twice. That's not denigration but facts. I have nothing against those players whatsoever. In fact I believe that they are shrewd signings given the limitations we have to live in. The squad had improved thanks to them and I said that in a previous post
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/club-ownership-senior-management-team-talk.484569/post-34507464
However let's be clear here. We're signing these players because we can't afford the likes of Fernandes, Tonali and Anderson. Regarding all talks of 'overspending' I can't see the club complaining about the £660m the Glazers placed on the club, the £886 million we paid in interest alone and the millions it costed us to hiring/sack Ashworth, to renew ETH's contract only to sack him later on ETH and to hire/sack Amorim. That's way more money then what it would cost us to bring two elite CM over the line.
Come off it, you know full well those little asides were a way of having a dig at them (even if the intention of it was dig at our owners). Same way I could retort and say I’m glad we didn’t spend £85 million on “twice relegated” Fernandes, even though that has nothing to do with his footballing ability and is just a cheap and shallow way of denigrating him.
I don’t disagree with the critique of our parasitic owners. But I’m genuinely elated we got Tielemans and Santos for less than the price of one Tonali. If it means we have funds to look at other positions then it’s a smart way to play the window given the financial limitations of our owners.
The EPL's financial strength is what keeping us afloat mate but the difference is felt throughout. While City, Liverpool, Arsenal and even Spurs can go for 100m players we're increasingly finding ourselves at the pound land searching for bargain signings to sort our problems.
Regarding your last paragraph, I don't really know what to say. All numbers indicate that unless there's a huge cash injection coming in then United's lavish spending will one day end. That's inevitable. The debt is simply too big and the stadium is a burden the club can't afford. Whether its happening this year or we're kicking the can down the road remain to be seen
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That's fair enough and I respect your opinion. All I can say is that trophies are won by players on the pitch not with money saved to service debt interest or to hire/sack managers and DOFs. I hope INEOS do better with United then they did at OGC Nice and Lausanne were they tanked those clubs.
We don’t disagree there. I just don’t see the need to have digs at our new signings to get that point across. It makes your post come across as unnecessarily agenda driven when I actually agree with the thrust of it.
I don't think that stating facts can be interpreted as a dig. I wouldn't say no to Berge either whose in a similar ball park to those two and whose characteristics compliment them. That's what we probably can afford given our financial situation, the many boots we need to fill and the incompetence of our board when dealing with sales.
But let's be honest here. If someone from the present time traveled to last April and he told us that our big CM rebuild which had been hyped for months consisted of Andrey Santos and Tielemans then we would have laughed at him. There wouldn't be a single United fan who would have supported this CM rebuild.
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You can describe it as “stating facts”, but choosing to hone in on those particular things with throwaway digs only for our signings when comparing them with other signings comes across as petty, shallow and agenda-driven.
Dig a tiny bit deeper or add a little critical thinking to your comparisons and they don’t really hold up. EG Tielemans had an injury last season (which happens) but the season before he clocked over a thousand more minutes than Anderson, Tonali or Fernandes did. Switch clubs around and Fernandes would have been a “squad player” last season behind Caicedo and Enzo and Santos would have been starting in that West Ham midfield. Tonali having a dodgy history with gambling is a “fact”, but is the conversation over their footballing merits really enhanced if I choose to throw that in as a dig?
Let's be honest here. If someone from the present time traveled to last April and told us that our big CM rebuild which had been hyped for months consisted of Fernandes and Tonali for £185 million then we would have laughed at him. Yet you hold those two up now as comparisons to damn INEOS with simply because they’ve gone for huge sums since, but back in April there would have been huge questions over spending so much on those two. At the time Fernandes was just seen as an interesting market opportunity because of West Ham’s relegation, and there was little plenty of talk that Tonali didn't offer the quality on the ball our midfield was crying out for (plenty Newcastle fans seemed happy to cash in on him). Yet our rivals sign them for huge sums and suddenly they become the coveted “elite” players that we’re missing out whilst ours are just injury prone or squad players.
Andrey and Tielemans are clearly backup plans or backup to the backup plan. So yes they are clearly inferior players to the players that we initially wanted but we probably couldn't afford. Now there's plenty of ways how to see things. You might say that Andrey was a squad player because of Caicedo and you're right. I might say that Andrey is a squad player to a side who ended 10th last season and had only 1 season as a first teamer and it happened in the French league. I'd be correct as well. You might say that Tielemans played more minutes to a then 21 year old Anderson and you're probably right. I'd might say that Aston Villa were playing at the UEFA which add games as opposed to Anderson who had just started with Nottingham Forest which leads to more games. You might downplay his injury record while I might highlight his multiple calf injuries dating to 21/22 and ankle problems dating to 22/23 that had been plaguing him since. It just a different view of seeing things. No bias or digs at all
Getting Anderson was going to be expensive the moment City was linked to him in February. In fact the athletic journalists were scratching their heads when they were constantly being told that United made him their first priority while also saying that we need to be accountable. Same with Tonali and Tchouameni. Newcastle are tough negotiators and they hate our guts while Tchouameni is an established player from Real Madrid. I concede that there was a small window of opportunity for Fernandes. However West ham hates us and he's a Mendes man. Therefore it was naive to think that there wouldn't be an auction for him and once that happened the price would go up.
Its still early to fully judge this transfer window but this window reminds me of a school cleaner back in my school days who was a car enthusiast. He'd spend hours going to car shows analysing each car, asking for their price and engaging in negotiation only to return home with his old Lada
Surely Tielemans is not a backup. To me it looks like we didnt know he was gonna be available until he did become available.
Do you believe that if we signed 2 between tchouameni, Anderson and Fernandes we would have also signed tielemans? I doubt it. I'd be very surprised if his agent didn't leak his minimum fee clause to the major clubs weeks if not months ago. We moved now because our plan A and possibly B were gone
I also believe we are reacting to the market at the moment. I won't be surprised if our next big signing will be the player Real Madrid decide to push out of the door. Once again it's not a dig to that player but simply the truth
He had clause, he was always available. We obviously knew about it for a while as would have the Saudi clubs.
As reported:
The release clause that saw Manchester United prise Youri Tielemans from Aston Villa was not widely known. Even a key figure involved in brokering the deal that saw Villa sign Tielemans was unaware of its existence, according to The Athletic.
I doubt that's true. We were looking to sign Tielemans before we knew he had a clause? His agent just didn't mention it when discussing a potential move? I agree we wouldn't have known about it until we engaged with his team, but even in the article says we have a good relationship with his agent. He's totally against the profile we would want to sign, until you factor in the clause. He's only a year younger than Casemiro who was deemed as not the signings we want to do, by Jim.
Bollocks - we were enquiring after Santos last summer. We’ve had interest in Tielemans for years. The chronology of signings in a window doesn’t neatly match with some master list of priorities or some universal ranking of abilities - there are all sorts of other variables in a window which determine the order of things.
And if you think Tielemans is an inferior player to Tonali then you need your head checked.
Your cleaner analogy is awful btw - doesn’t even make sense.
The inflation in transfer fees this window is a material issue - I have posted the Athletic review of the 186 or so transfers in the 25 summer window before - it’s worth a read - so many players many of whom cost significant sums but are not on any measure a success - the amount paid is no hpGuarantee if success nit least as there are so many other factors impacting whether an individual player slots into a squad especially if moving countries at the same time
For me the example to keep in mind is the 2025 summer window Liverpool had - Isaak Wertz Kerkez Frimpong Ekitike etc and the league winners have a terrible season and sack their coach
The amount a club like UTD spend is not the issue it’s who they sign and how they all gel together - Santos and Youri look like strong sensible additions and coming back to this threads theme I can see AT fitting in well if he really wants to make the move and will throw himself into the Carrick project. If he or any other big name player is unconvinced and does t want to make the move that’s more important for me than whether the talent is there or the name a big one especially for players who are currently at the very biggest clubs
Any player moving from the club that was their dream move is a red flag - think Kleiverts to NU - stepping diwn in his mind - never worked
So I can see Real deciding to move on AT - I can see UTD being very interested - I can see him fitting into the team shape - But he has to be excited by the move and prepared to make a go of it - Casemiro when a little older clearly was super professional and his mind was strong even if his body was failing him - impossible to know from afar about ATs real mindset
In terms of fit I dont get the sense Carrick wants a classic DM destroyer - it seems more like he wants all the CM group need to be comfortable on the ball and adapatable - if not AT I suspect it won’t be Berge or Baleba maybe Kone or another surprise the club have kept quiet
For me the example to keep in mind is the 2025 summer window Liverpool had - Isaak Wertz Kerkez Frimpong Ekitike etc and the league winners have a terrible season and sack their coach
The amount a club like UTD spend is not the issue it’s who they sign and how they all gel together - Santos and Youri look like strong sensible additions and coming back to this threads theme I can see AT fitting in well if he really wants to make the move and will throw himself into the Carrick project. If he or any other big name player is unconvinced and does t want to make the move that’s more important for me than whether the talent is there or the name a big one especially for players who are currently at the very biggest clubs
Any player moving from the club that was their dream move is a red flag - think Kleiverts to NU - stepping diwn in his mind - never worked
So I can see Real deciding to move on AT - I can see UTD being very interested - I can see him fitting into the team shape - But he has to be excited by the move and prepared to make a go of it - Casemiro when a little older clearly was super professional and his mind was strong even if his body was failing him - impossible to know from afar about ATs real mindset
In terms of fit I dont get the sense Carrick wants a classic DM destroyer - it seems more like he wants all the CM group need to be comfortable on the ball and adapatable - if not AT I suspect it won’t be Berge or Baleba maybe Kone or another surprise the club have kept quiet
On the TOTD Podcast following the Tielemans move it was widely discussed that this £35m clause was likely uncovered recently, and we moved quickly to capture that opportunity before others may have done. It's one that may not be public but can be divulged from agents, so we probably did a good job in surfacing that information early doors.
To me that rings of another endorsement of the clubs footballing leadership.
Folks, this is the Tchouameni thread.
Please take the talk about the club and Tielemans to the relevant threads.
Please take the talk about the club and Tielemans to the relevant threads.
Berge is 28, and A.Robinson is 29 yet we are interested. Think age is a nonfactor if the deal is cheap for INEOS