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Sell now. He's lacking the basic fundamentals of a footballer. He'll never be good enough. Sell now when he can still get close to our money back. If we keep him another season we'll never shift him, he'll be the winger version of Phil Jones stealing a living here.
Are these rumours coming from Leeds side or United's side? It's hard to work out whether we're pushing for this to happen or not.
Yep. More chance we'll offer him a new contract. I'm serious.
You've come up with some odd logic there. The very fact that we have two players that can play in his natural position means that we could afford to buy him and develop him slowly. Unfortunately we now play him out of position on the right.
Oh yeah, for sure. With a big pay rise too. Jones is on 120k apparently, so expect James to match that at minimum.
Christ, that's grim.
what was SAF thinking?The point presumably being, "I'm a shit manager"?
I think it was 15 rising to 18. If we can get 12 rising to 15 back I'd take the 3m loss in a heartbeat and move on. We took a fairly low price gamble on a raw player and it didn't pay off. Move on and get him off the wage bill.
Ole disagrees as we saw in the run in last season, he doesn't rate him at all
I’d say we can recoup that money. He proved he can hang in the Premier League. Okay he’s not good enough to challenge for the league but for newly promoted team, whom are looking for players who can play in the league, I say 15 million is doable. I don’t want to lose 3 million to those dirty bastards.
I guessed you missed the point on purpose?
He did alright for the first 6 weeks or so but he's a one trick pony, once opponents wised up to that one trick he was nullified and became basically useless. I think if anything his stock has probably gone down since coming here, as he's regularly bantered and memed on social media and pretty much unanimously seen as someone miles out of his depth in the PL.I’d say we can recoup that money. He proved he can hang in the Premier League. Okay he’s not good enough to challenge for the league but for newly promoted team, whom are looking for players who can play in the league, I say 15 million is doable. I don’t want to lose 3 million to those dirty bastards.
Luckily a lot of premier league managers won’t see it that way. He’s got huge problems when teams are sitting back but if he’s constantly on the counter then he has definitely something to offer with his blistering pace. It’s hard to find players like that and teams at the bottom need that.
There's nothing odd about it. When we had Ronaldo, Giggs, Nani and Park, signing a wildcard like Tosic was understandable. In our current team, we have no space to carry a wildcard like James. There's still question marks over Rashford and Greenwood is still very young. We've put ourselves in a position where James is a vital squad member and his ability is far from deserving of that.
Yeah was thinking similarly re Martial and Rashford. I think his confidence is damaged on the right at this point and getting it back up could be difficult. But i think he was throwing in decent crosses early last season and the above weren't doing a very good job of taking advantage of that. Neither is that strong in terms of making near post runs for easy tap ins or getting on the end of crosses. Martial in particular improved last season in this regard but as they got better James got more fatigued and low on confidence and the number and quality of crosses fell.
Tosic ended up being alright. Don’t think James is as bad as people make out either - we just need a big player to start ahead of him.
James is going nowhere. His wages are minimal and he is the least of our problems. Some poster correctly said, you must be crazy to get rid of James while retaining Mata, Lingard, Pereira, Jones and Rojo.
You just said we had two players to play on the left before we even consider James. So how many more left wingers would you like before you would consider signing a player such as James? 3? 4? 5?
You really think Ole doesn’t rate him, yet chooses to select him? That’s bizarre train of thought you got going on there
Not sure how good Sarr but given Watford were relegated he shouldn't command a bit fee.
Watford want in excess of £40 million, that’s why Liverpool passed on him.
Bloody PL clubs and their unrealistic fee demands. No wonder it's become so difficult to leave these clubs (see Zaha, Grealish etc )
Yes he had little choice since Greenwood didnt train with the first team due to being in self isolation.You really think Ole doesn’t rate him, yet chooses to select him? That’s bizarre train of thought you got going on there
Or how many times does Rashford have to have awful game on the left for Ole to drop him?
If you took the time to read and understand, you'd see my point was more about the quality of options rather than the number. But whatever.
You mentioned Rashford and Martial who are both quality players...
Hate selling to Leeds though, just on the off chance that he does well there, I would just hate that. Agree with your assessment of the player, can’t believe he was selected on Saturday. Can imagine that sent a ripple among the other players - “omg are we really that sh!t?”
I played plenty but that is hardly the point. We have seen his production on the left during the first half of last season and for a 15m signing with no Premier League experience it was very good. James is nowhere near our best player but I can name plenty who are worse and his performances on the left for Wales a couple of weeks ago show that when he is used properly he is decent. I have no problem with people saying he should not have played because in that game, in that role he is never going to be effective and OGS should have seen that much by now. I do have an issue with the fact that he seems to have become the main target of abuse from a large section of armchair punters who haven't a fraction of his ability continually claiming as you have done that he is shit.
