Continual re-evaluation of the United Squad

RedTillI'mDead

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Apr 16, 2010
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Wow, is the best way to start! Under that other guy it looked like we need a £1bn investment to even consider competing at the top. Now a small part of me wonders if we want to disrupt this flow at all.

It's gone from what looked an easy rebuild with obvious gaps in CB, DM and RW and then maybe RB. For some nothing will have changed, but for others the tide might be starting to turn.

It feels early in the journey of many of our reserve players, but where we could have started with a clean slate we are starting to see merit in many of our reserves.

Below is my attempt at a Football Manager style heat map review of positions to help guide where you would prioritise improvement of our spend. If there are any other reserves you think I should include let me know. I'll limit my list to 6 per position (12 for doubled up positions, e.g. CB)

GK (easy - just give De Gea a contract)
1. De Gea
2. Romero
3. Grant
4. Pereira

LB
1. Shaw
2. Dalot
3. Young
4. Rojo
5. Mitchell
6. Borthwick-Jackson

CB
1. Lindelof
2. Smalling
3. Bailly
4. Jones
5. Darmian
6. Rojo
7. Tuanzebe
8. Fosu-Mensah

RB
1. Dalot
2. Young
3. Darmian
4. Valencia
5. Tuanzebe

DM
1. Matic
2. McTominay
3. Herrera
4. Garner

CM
1. Pogba
2. Herrera
3. Pereira
4. Fred

AM
1. Pogba
2. Lingard
3. Mata
4. Pereira
5. Fred
6. Gomes

LWF
1. Martial
2. Rashford
3. Lukaku
4. Sanchez
5. Gomes

RWF
1. Lingard
2. Lukaku
3. Rashford
4. Mata
5. Chong
6. Sanchez (he should be higher, but never gets played here!)

CF
1. Rashford
2. Lukaku
3. Sanchez
4. Martial
5. Greenwood

Personally I'd have some of the youngsters higher, but in reality that doesn't happen. The positions where Ole mighy say differently is RB where Young would be 1st. Jones might be ahead of Bailly as well. Also Sanchez might be higher in places but at the moment I just cant rate him.

I've kept things vaguely simple, I.e. not adding LWB, RWB, LCM, RCM and i see LW as broadly the same as LWF, etc.

The obvious gaps to me are LB/ RB where I think we need quality cover. DM we could probably add someone ahead of Matic for greater mobility. RW would provide a good option to change the way we play and could help Lukaku.

I'm just cautious of holding back McTominay who is starting to show signs of having some quality so might be the DM with some patience and Matic has a couple more years in him.

On RW it's a similar story where Chong needs games to step up and without chances we can't tell if he'll save us £100m over buying someone like Sancho.

LB/RB I have no such fears, we just need quality competition for those positions.

Other positions to consider are..
CB - is Bailly going to maintain consistency to be a worthy option. I could see us selling and upgrading. Jones and Rojo could easily be upgraded so I'm sure we could bring in someone and its just whether they dislodge Smalling (Koulibaly) and thus we still have a quality backup or share the responsibility for healthy competition e.g. Manolas.

CF - Do we add a Rashford backup for the maintaining the pacey counter attack or does Greenwood take the step up.

With players upping their games I don't think there are many clear cut positions to upgrade, but it's hard to say how far we are off a Barca or City without facing them.