British Core

Patrick08

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You don't think players like Sancho, Maddison and Rashford are creative? Looking at other clubs you have Sterling and Hudson odoi.

There are definitely creative, British players.
I am generally talking about midfield players here not about wide players when I use the word "creative".

And No, Rashford ain't creative. Sterling sancho, Maguire are recent breeds who belong to that 10-20% category in English football who you can call as Creative, and many of them are in other clubs.
 

Hawks2008

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British core will work their ass off to win the ball back but won't be creative enough to break defences on the ball.

It's a naive approach to just stick to one policy while signing players.
English lads will bleed red for the club cause they just get us ya know? Lazy foreign fairies just want to play tippy tappy shite in Spain.
 

oggy boy

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Last manager that had success with British core is SAF.

Another one that is doing very well is Poch.

So do you think Ole is on their level or United is going to be new Everton after all?
 

Patrick08

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English lads will bleed red for the club cause they just get us ya know? Lazy foreign fairies just want to play tippy tappy shite in Spain.
Bleeding red doesn't bring creativity and ability to play in high press. The squad and the team has to be a mixture of it. Foriegn players will also bleed Red if we show enough ambition to compete on on levels which we don't. So this is just an excuse for the board penny pinch in the market.
 

cyberman

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This thread is 5 years out of date. The Young Brits are some of the brightest talents in world football.
But Brexit har de har and all that
 

Hawks2008

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Bleeding red doesn't bring creativity and ability to play in high press. The squad and the team has to be a mixture of it. Foriegn players will also bleed Red if we show enough ambition to compete on on levels which we don't. So this is just an excuse for the board penny pinch in the market.
Oh I definitely agree, was just being sarcastic.
 

Massive Spanner

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So we did bid £70m for Maguire.

I joked a few weeks ago that our transfer policy this summer seems to be the grand total of "British, played in PL/Championship, seems decent, bonus if he's young" and I guess it's actually not far off the mark.
 

cyberman

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So we did bid £70m for Maguire.

I joked a few weeks ago that our transfer policy this summer seems to be the grand total of "British, played in PL/Championship, seems decent, bonus if he's young" and I guess it's actually not far off the mark.
We're linked with Bruno and Ben Yedder as much as with Maguire? Fecking De Ligt was a target at one point
 

Massive Spanner

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We're linked with Bruno and Ben Yedder as much as with Maguire? Fecking De Ligt was a target at one point
De Ligt has probably been everyone's target to be fair.

Fernandes and Yedder would be great signings so hopefully it's actually true but right now it does look like our main priority is snapping up these British players.
 

cyberman

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De Ligt has probably been everyone's target to be fair.

Fernandes and Yedder would be great signings so hopefully it's actually true but right now it does look like our main priority is snapping up these British players.
I just hope we get him, he seems to be a long term target regardless of nationality
 

matt10000

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So we did bid £70m for Maguire.

I joked a few weeks ago that our transfer policy this summer seems to be the grand total of "British, played in PL/Championship, seems decent, bonus if he's young" and I guess it's actually not far off the mark.
What is wrong with British, played in PL/Championship, decent and young?

British - has obvious advantages in terms of culture, surrounding family, less likley to get homesick or want to go to sunnier climates etc....

Played in PL - we play the majority of our games in the PL and so proven n the PL is hardly a bad thing and removes risk of non PL not being able to adapt

Played in Championship – Why ignore all players from lower leagues if we think they have the potential? We send out on loan often enough to lower league clubs

Decent – we should always sign decent players over crap ones

Young – have you ever heard of the Busby Babes or class of 92?
 

Massive Spanner

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What is wrong with British, played in PL/Championship, decent and young?
I'll stop you there because I never said there was anything wrong with it.

Well, except for the fact that players like that cost an absolute fortune, as we're witnessing right now.
 

Dr. StrangeHate

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Will any of the players we are linked with or bought start comfortably at City or Liverpool. I think other than De ligt and Rabiot I would say no. So no chance we are building to compete with them any time soon.
Buying British is ok if you are getting peak bale, Sancho, TAA, sterling and Kane. I don't understand what Ole's aim for the future is as currently we are recruiting to compete with Leicester, Wolves and Everton rather than the teams above us.
As a non-brit United supporter, I would love United less if we have adopted a strong nationality based recruiting policy.
 

Chipper

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Will any of the players we are linked with or bought start comfortably at City or Liverpool. I think other than De ligt and Rabiot I would say no. So no chance we are building to compete with them any time soon.
Buying British is ok if you are getting peak bale, Sancho, TAA, sterling and Kane. I don't understand what Ole's aim for the future is as currently we are recruiting to compete with Leicester, Wolves and Everton rather than the teams above us.
As a non-brit United supporter, I would love United less if we have adopted a strong nationality based recruiting policy.
Going away from the British thing for a sceond, based on what they've done so far our targets/signings would very much struggle to get into those teams.

I do think that's a bit of red herring when it comes to Liverpool though. Many of the players they have bought under Klopp have improved, realising potential rather than being already at a level where you'd look at them and say they were sure-fire bets to do what they've done in the past couple of seasons if you based it off how they did at their old clubs.

Van Dijk and and Sane at Southampton, Salah at Roma, Wijnaldum at Newcastle, Robertson at Hull, Oxlade-Chamberlain at Arsenal. Not many, if any of those players are ready made sure-fire bets to get into the current City side if you only look at their performances for their old clubs. Salah and Van Dijk would have been closest, but Liverpool have built many players up and made them into how they are regarded now, even those two have come on a fair bit and stepped up to new levels.

Not to say buying young potential or hoping to exploit untapped potential works all the time, it is of course risky, but it was they've done to a large extent and it would appear that we're trying to emulate that. None of the players they got were regarded as being at peak Kane or Bale level when Liverpool signed them. They've made stars rather than bought them.
 
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Andrew~

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If someone told you to buy a British Leyland instead of a Honda, you would laugh in their face.

That’s how stupid this ‘British core’ nonsense is.
 

altodevil

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It's pathetic and a symptom of our inability to modernise as a club.
 

Stubble

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Bringing in some hungry young English talent to supplement the squad is fine - but if we are ignoring proven international options (especially in midfield) that were available (such as Ndombele, Bruno and Tielemans) just to stick to this policy religiously that would be completely nuts and would yet again proove the lack of football nowse of Woodward and the those managing and making strategic decisions at this club.
We have scouts all over the globe apparently - if this is the new policy we might as well sack the lot and save an absolute fortune !
 

Enigma_87

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British - has obvious advantages in terms of culture, surrounding family, less likley to get homesick or want to go to sunnier climates etc....
Essentially let's hit on 5's and 6's because the 10's are likely to leave at some point?
 

Dr. StrangeHate

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Going away from the British thing for a sceond, based on what they've done so far our targets/signings would very much struggle to get into those teams.

I do think that's a bit of red herring when it comes to Liverpool though. Many of the players they have bought under Klopp have improved, realising potential rather than being already at a level where you'd look at them and say they were sure-fire bets to do what they've done in the past couple of seasons if you based it off how they did at their old clubs.

Van Dijk and and Sane at Southampton, Salah at Roma, Wijnaldum at Newcastle, Robertson at Hull, Oxlade-Chamberlain at Arsenal. Not many, if any of those players are ready made sure-fire bets to get into the current City side if you only look at their performances for their old clubs. Salah and Van Dijk would have been closest, but Liverpool have built many players up and made them into how they are regarded now, even those two have come on a fair bit and stepped up to new levels.

Not to say buying young potential or hoping to exploit untapped potential works all the time, it is of course risky, but it was they've done to a large extent and it would appear that we're trying to emulate that. None of the players they got were regarded as being at peak Kane or Bale level when Liverpool signed them. They've made stars rather than bought them.
I agree with your assessment of how Liverpool bought and improved players. But I think it is unrealistic to expect United to do the same. We haven't changed the coaching team from Mourinho and the last player we improved was De Gea. We are not going to suddenly start improving our current or bought players when we haven't done so for so long. I would say Lukaku, Pogba, Martial, Baily all were better players when they arrived and our coaching made them worse. So if we are going down the route of coaching to improve players we need to appoint better coaches first.
 

ReallyUSA

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So we did bid £70m for Maguire.

I joked a few weeks ago that our transfer policy this summer seems to be the grand total of "British, played in PL/Championship, seems decent, bonus if he's young" and I guess it's actually not far off the mark.
Foreigner heavy didn't work.
 

0le

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I agree with your assessment of how Liverpool bought and improved players. But I think it is unrealistic to expect United to do the same. We haven't changed the coaching team from Mourinho and the last player we improved was De Gea. We are not going to suddenly start improving our current or bought players when we haven't done so for so long. I would say Lukaku, Pogba, Martial, Baily all were better players when they arrived and our coaching made them worse. So if we are going down the route of coaching to improve players we need to appoint better coaches first.
Lukaku has himself to blame. He still has too much muscle on him. I agree though, we have struggled to improve players. I guess on an outsider bet you may argue Lindelof has improved compared to his ability before he arrived.
 

simonhch

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Yeah. That team would genuinely finish about 14th in the league. Forget LVG and Jose's cockups in the market,if we back Ole to cobble together a team like that it would set us back a good ten years with our current owners/board. We'd need a Saudi takeover and a complete gutting of the entire team over two transfer windows.
Probably have to blow up the stadium too and change the name of the club.
 

DoubleRevv

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Essentially let's hit on 5's and 6's because the 10's are likely to leave at some point?
Unfortunately most foreign players who on paper are close to 10 use United as a bridge to Madrid etc. Examples are Pogba, Di Maria, De Gea, and this has a destabilizing effect on the club.

I like our current approach of young and hungry British players. Historically British players often have tenures of up to 10 years with us, and if they are decent to good, our future transfers will plug the quality gap because we can then splurge on 1 or 2 players in each window, who will elevate the team.

Caftards complaining should have patience and understand that we need possibly 3 years to get back to where we are. AWB and Maguire are clearly improvements on what we have in those positions and Longstaff is potentially a very good player too.

Last point, it is easier to reset the culture of the team by having a core of players who innately understand the history of this club and the expectations that come with being a player here.

It's pathetic and a symptom of our inability to modernise as a club.
Stick to FM
 

Gordon S

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Last point, it is easier to reset the culture of the team by having a core of players who innately understand the history of this club and the expectations that come with being a player here.
Would you say that players like Herrera, Valencia, Park, Vidic, Evra never understood the history of the club and the expectations that come with it?
 

Enigma_87

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Unfortunately most foreign players who on paper are close to 10 use United as a bridge to Madrid etc. Examples are Pogba, Di Maria, De Gea, and this has a destabilizing effect on the club.

I like our current approach of young and hungry British players. Historically British players often have tenures of up to 10 years with us, and if they are decent to good, our future transfers will plug the quality gap because we can then splurge on 1 or 2 players in each window, who will elevate the team.

Caftards complaining should have patience and understand that we need possibly 3 years to get back to where we are. AWB and Maguire are clearly improvements on what we have in those positions and Longstaff is potentially a very good player too.

Last point, it is easier to reset the culture of the team by having a core of players who innately understand the history of this club and the expectations that come with being a player here.
To be fair football changed a lot since the Fergie days. Even if the player is British who is to say he won't move away ? Bale rejected us for Real and was not feeling like coming in the past. De Gea has been our best player and I'd rather take 5-6 years of a world class player than 10 years of beans, beans, beans.

No one is arguing AWB and Maguire would better us, however they come at premium price and who is to say they are better than continental options? You can see teams like Spurs, Liverpool, City, Chelsea who are more consistent these days going for continental players rather than your British core. Even Leicester go for continental players these days. Wolves who were a very good side also last year rely on Neves, Jota, Patricio, Jimenez, Moutinho, Boly. I struggle to name a team that had a successful spell bringing young British core since Fergie years.
 

roonster09

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To be fair football changed a lot since the Fergie days. Even if the player is British who is to say he won't move away ? Bale rejected us for Real and was not feeling like coming in the past. De Gea has been our best player and I'd rather take 5-6 years of a world class player than 10 years of beans, beans, beans.

No one is arguing AWB and Maguire would better us, however they come at premium price and who is to say they are better than continental options? You can see teams like Spurs, Liverpool, City, Chelsea who are more consistent these days going for continental players rather than your British core. Even Leicester go for continental players these days. Wolves who were a very good side also last year rely on Neves, Jota, Patricio, Jimenez, Moutinho, Boly. I struggle to name a team that had a successful spell bringing young British core since Fergie years.
Forget British core but clubs which dominate usually have local core. There are exceptions like City who struggle to fill their HG quota.

Chelsea reached CL finals twice and they had 4 English players in first 11 (with Terry suspended for second finals).
When ManUtd reached 3 finals in 4 years they had 5-6 British players. In 2008 we had 6 in starting 11 and 2 on the bench.
In 2018, Liverpool had 4 British players in the starting 11.
In 2019, Liverpool had 3 British players in starting 11 and 2 came on as a sub.
In 2019, Spurs had 5 British players.

So any time English team reached CL finals, they had good enough British core players. Obviously it's always the balance. You have to balance this with very good foreign players and having British players for the sake of it won't work either.

Coming to the local core. If you see any team that's dominating their leagues and CL, they have local core.

2017 and 2018: Madrid had 3 Spanish players in the 11 and 2 came on
2017: Juventus had 4 Italian players and 1 came on as a sub
2016: Madrid had 2 Spanish players in 11, 7 in match day 18 squad. Atletico Madrid had 5 in the 11.
2015: Barca had 4 Spanish players in the 11 and 2 came on as a sub. Juventus had 5 Italians in the 11.
2014: Madrid had 3 Spanish players in the 11 and 2 came on. Total they had 8/18 in match day squad. Atletico had 6 in their staring 11 and 1 came on as a sub
2012: Dortmund had 7 German players in their 11 and 1 came on. Total they had 11/18 German players. Bayern had 5 German players in their 11 and 1 came on.
2011: Bayern had 8 German players in their 11 and 2 as subs. Chelsea had 4 English players in their 11 and this is with Terry's suspension.

Key is to find the balance. Sign the best possible local players or best possible young players and then foreign players.
 

SiRed

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Really don't see what the problem is in wanting a British core.
All clubs IMO should have around 50% of the starting 11 from the same country the club is based.
This is how a club keeps its identity and stays true to its traditions.
I have never gone into an Indian restaurant and seen a white guy stirring my Jalfrezi.
Occasionally you will see someone like Gordon Ramsey who raises the standard of my Jalfrezi and those are the ones worth bringing in.
 
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Really don't see what the problem is in wanting a British core.
All clubs IMO should have around 50% of the starting 11 from the same country the club is based.
This is how a club keeps its identity and stays true to its traditions.
I have never gone into an Indian restaurant and seen a white guy stirring my Jalfrezi.
Occasionally you will see someone like Gordon Ramsey who raises the standard of my Jalfrezi and those are the ones worth bringing in.
It think the terminology has got some people thinking it’s anti-foreigner or little England, which isint the case at all.

If you look at the vast majority of successful sides, they have a good contingent of players from that nationality. It’s makes sense, it’s their identity.

In my mind we need to get rid of the highly paid squad players like Sanchez, Rojo, Fred, Bailly and Darmian who offer very little and replace them with players who grew up in England (that doesn’t mean they have to live 2 miles from Manchester, they don’t have to even be British, but who came through the youth system at British clubs) who at the very least are more likely to have the right attitude when they play and will be so much cheaper.

An example of the pointless signing of Fred as a squad player when McTomminey can do the job just as well - that’s £52m and £150k per week (no idea what his actual wage is) that we didn’t need to spend. You could substitute McTomminey for Andreas in this example (a player who came through Utd’s youth set up).

We don’t need world class players in every position, and we don’t need expensive names who are just at the club for a pay check and don’t deliver.

We should then augment that British ‘base’ with world class players or players who cannot be sourced locally. Just like we did with Cantona, Schmeichal, RVN, RVP, Ronaldo etc.
 

matt10000

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If someone told you to buy a British Leyland instead of a Honda, you would laugh in their face.

That’s how stupid this ‘British core’ nonsense is.

This argument is absolute none sense. All Honda cars are deemed to be good and reliable whereas all British Leyland cars were deemed to be unreliable and crap. However, you can’t make sweeping statements about human football players as they are not mechanical machines where you can apply these assumptions across the board that all Japanese players are good and reliable and all British players are crap?!?!


I think what some people (including me) are saying is that although we need the highest quality players across the world, it makes sense to have balance where the core are British. Not because they are better players but because a team is more than a group of individual players. A team needs identity, character and need to reflect/represent the club or else we may as well change the name of the club to whoever our shirt sponsor are at the time ‘Chevrolet United’. Manchester United is based in Salford and England which is part of Great Britain and plays in an English league. Manchester United is also now an internationally supported team with many fans from all around the world. Therefore, you would have thought that to reflect what Manchester United is and represents you would need a core of English / British / Foreign but lived in UK for significant time players (with some local Salford/Manchester/North West talent) with a mix of some of the best international players across the globe. I don’t think you can put a number on it but if you look at our fan base you would probably identify at a home game a majority of fans from Manchester/Salford/North West England, a large number of fans from the rest of the UK and some fans from all over the world. Watching on TV you would identify huge number from all over the world. You would hope that all these people can identify with the team. Don’t get me wrong this is not a xenophobic thing, I just think it makes sense to have some identity that that the entire squad can buy into, the entire fan base can relate to rather than being an Arsenal. It makes sense for all the reasons people have said about stability, less likely to leave, understand the culture etc. I don’t think we should ignore brilliant international talent because they aren’t British and I don’t think we should ignore British because they might be a bit more expensive. It is about balance and having a guiding strategy and that strategy should be to build a team with a British background core that includes the best international players. So when looking at potential players we should consider this (not apply rules across the board) but consider background etc. The stability thing is significant and SAF recognised it and preferred it if players were settled with families, he did not apply a rule across the board but it was one of the things he considered when looking at players
 
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devilish

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I fail to grasp the need of a British core to have 'passion' or 'identity'. Shitty doesn't have that and they are fairing relatively well aren't they? Also the time when players start and end their career at the same club is pretty much over. Even 18 year olds are moving around, sometimes at a different league just to make money. That is of course if they have the necessary talent to do so. You won't see the likes of Lingard or Young pushing for a deal outside OT for the reason that the alternative is nowhere near as attractive as us.

What we need is players with the right attitude and the right talent something that comes irrespective of nationality. I can understand the likes of Bayern, Juventus and Real to go for homegrown talent. Players in those leagues can be bought at decent prices and with the right talent. However in a league were the new Steve Bruce is rated 70m-90m then surely the club must look elsewhere. I can't help thinking that the club has some serious lack of the confidence in our scouts ability to find the right talent for the club and is therefore relying on the limited pool of players the manager and his mates want and trust.
 

thegregster

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I fail to grasp the need of a British core to have 'passion' or 'identity'. Shitty doesn't have that and they are fairing relatively well aren't they? Also the time when players start and end their career at the same club is pretty much over. Even 18 year olds are moving around, sometimes at a different league just to make money. That is of course if they have the necessary talent to do so. You won't see the likes of Lingard or Young pushing for a deal outside OT for the reason that the alternative is nowhere near as attractive as us.

What we need is players with the right attitude and the right talent something that comes irrespective of nationality. I can understand the likes of Bayern, Juventus and Real to go for homegrown talent. Players in those leagues can be bought at decent prices and with the right talent. However in a league were the new Steve Bruce is rated 70m-90m then surely the club must look elsewhere. That unless, they lack the confidence in our scouts to find the right talent for the club.
We seen him play v us in the 2011 youth cup final.

We could have signed him when he was at Sheff Utd. Reports suggest we were watching him.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mi...ester-united-transfer-news-united-2264842.amp

We could have signed him when he was at Hull.

It's pretty clear our scouts haven't a clue.
 

roonster09

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We seen him play v us in the 2011 youth cup final.

We could have signed him when he was at Sheff Utd. Reports suggest we were watching him.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mi...ester-united-transfer-news-united-2264842.amp

We could have signed him when he was at Hull.

It's pretty clear our scouts haven't a clue.
You can use that logic to every player when they sign for a new club.

Edit: We should have signed him when Hull got relegated though, he looked very good against us and Jose wanted ball playing CB.
 

devilish

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We seen him play v us in the 2011 youth cup final.

We could have signed him when he was at Sheff Utd. Reports suggest we were watching him.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mi...ester-united-transfer-news-united-2264842.amp

We could have signed him when he was at Hull.

It's pretty clear our scouts haven't a clue.
I can only come up with 3 reasons why we're taking this path and none of them are nice to say the least

A- We're on some sort of train of nostalgia, were we believe that only British players will provide us with a honest day's work. In that case we're not only insulting the many foreigners that had spitted blood for our cause but it will be a rather foolish and expensive way to manage the club

B- As said our scouts aren't trusted. In that case why the feck we're hiring 50+ scouts in the first place.

C- We're not attracting the top foreign talent we need and must therefore rely on the local pool to dig ourselves out. Which isn't exactly a great idea either as there's a reason why those same players aren't attracting attention from other top clubs as well.

If you ask me, I think its a mix of B and C.
 
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We seen him play v us in the 2011 youth cup final.

We could have signed him when he was at Sheff Utd. Reports suggest we were watching him.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mi...ester-united-transfer-news-united-2264842.amp

We could have signed him when he was at Hull.

It's pretty clear our scouts haven't a clue.
You could say that about the vast majority of players - looking back in hindsight is easy.

Players also need to develop, going to Utd or another big team if often very detrimental to a players development. Look at Chelsea and the fact they have something like 45 players out on loan. You can’t just stockpile players.

Now I’m certaintly not saying Utd haven’t made mistakes in the transfer market, everyone knows that’s not the case.

When Maguire went to Leicester from Hull, we had just bought Bailly for £30m the season before and bought Lindelof for £30m that summer - two players of a similar profile to Maguire, we weren’t going to buy a third inexperienced CB. Who would have thought out of those three Maguire would have made the most progress? It would have been Jose who decided which CBs we bought at that time.
 

devilish

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You could say that about the vast majority of players - looking back in hindsight is easy.

Players also need to develop, going to Utd or another big team if often very detrimental to a players development. Look at Chelsea and the fact they have something like 45 players out on loan. You can’t just stockpile players.

Now I’m certaintly not saying Utd haven’t made mistakes in the transfer market, everyone knows that’s not the case.

When Maguire went to Leicester from Hull, we had just bought Bailly for £30m the season before and bought Lindelof for £30m that summer - two players of a similar profile to Maguire, we weren’t going to buy a third inexperienced CB. Who would have thought out of those three Maguire would have made the most progress? It would have been Jose who decided which CBs we bought at that time.
You're right of course however, our scout track record in the past 10 years or so had been meah to the very least.
 

Treble

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It wouldn't hurt us to have a core of excellent British players. The important thing is to buy the right players and have the right manager.

Buying British players on the premise that they will be more hungry, professional, etc. would be stupid. Watching Liverpool and City I don't see any difference in motivation and professionalism between their British and non-British players. Fernandinho is old and non-British and yet looks 10 times hungrier than many young British players.
 

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You're right of course however, our scout track record in the past 10 years or so had been meah to the very least.
Scouts don't sign players. It's on recruitment team.

A regular FM game player knew about De Ligt when he was very young, so any scout worth his salt would have had shit loads of reports on him. Likewise for many players. It's how our recruitment team assess the information.