David Brooks

Maureen-yo

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We don’t appear to have massive ambition to win the league or challenge in Europe, no. However if you say that on here you’ll get pelted with abuse & called a WUM.

We seem to place far more importance on having a strong British presence in our team than the other top 6 clubs. David Brooks is not twice the player Ferran Torres is, in fact he’s less talented, yet we appear willing to pay twice the price. I assume the fact that he is British plays a part in that.
Or maybe it's because the likes of Torres etc dont want to come to united? Maybe they arent convinced that Ole is the man to allow them to win trophies etc. Not saying that's my view point but it will weigh heavy on player's minds.
 

Smithy89

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Bexit FC back again, if we knew how to do transfers and squad building we could have a bench up there with the likes of Bayern and City. Instead we have the likes of James and Lingard and are now going for a relegated Brooks who has barely played a full 90 mins ever.
 

TrustInJanuzaj

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Christ the way people go on about Brexit FC you’d think there are no good British players around. We clearly aren’t only looking at British talents but there just happens to be lots of talent going round at the moment. Brooks is a decent player but anything above £30 million would be a massive waste.
 

roonster09

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Bexit FC back again, if we knew how to do transfers and squad building we could have a bench up there with the likes of Bayern and City. Instead we have the likes of James and Lingard and are now going for a relegated Brooks who has barely played a full 90 mins ever.
Same City also signed Ake from relegated Bournemouth. PL champions signed Robertson and Wijnaldum from relegated sides. There is nothing wrong with signing players from relegated teams as long as you identify right players.

Also Bayern signed Kimmich from second division Leipzig.
 

Smithy89

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Same City also signed Ake from relegated Bournemouth. PL champions signed Robertson and Wijnaldum from relegated sides. There is nothing wrong with signing players from relegated teams as long as you identify right players.
Totally agree, i have no issue with Brooks. My frustration and venting is coming from a hatred towards Joel Glazer and the rest of the scum.
 

SteveW

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Bexit FC back again, if we knew how to do transfers and squad building we could have a bench up there with the likes of Bayern and City. Instead we have the likes of James and Lingard and are now going for a relegated Brooks who has barely played a full 90 mins ever.
Another one of these posters, fantastic :rolleyes:
 

amolbhatia50k

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Seems to be a squad player signing. If so, hope we send James out on loan or something. Can't be stocking on merely decent players. If he's genuinely got top class talent, then it's a different matter but I've heard anyone say that about this chap.
 

Schmeichel's Cartwheel

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Seems to be a squad player signing. If so, hope we send James out on loan or something. Can't be stocking on merely decent players. If he's genuinely got top class talent, then it's a different matter but I've heard anyone say that about this chap.
To be honest if we can get our money back for James we should do it. He’s young & may improve but is really lacking in the basic fundamentals of being a footballer at the top level, it’s almost impossible to imagine him ever being good enough technically.

Brooks is levels above James & if he is a squad player signing he’d be a big upgrade for our bench.

If we can get £15m each for James & Pereira, then spend that money on Brooks that would be a fantastic piece of business.
 

amolbhatia50k

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To be honest if we can get our money back for James we should do it. He’s young & may improve but is really lacking in the basic fundamentals of being a footballer at the top level, it’s almost impossible to imagine him ever being good enough technically.

Brooks is levels above James & if he is a squad player signing he’d be a big upgrade for our bench.

If we can get £15m each for James & Pereira, then spend that money on Brooks that would be a fantastic piece of business.
In that case get rid of James and Periera and get this chap in. My worry is stockpiling players that don't have genuine excellence. People go on about "mentality" being the main thing. Look at Lingard, Periera and James. They all have a solid mentality but talent is essential.
 

RedRover

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Nope. Just pointing out none were signed for 40 million to sit on the bench or pad the squad out.
If we have players in the academy currently good enough to fill gaps to the required level then it stands to reason we wouldn't have the portables er have, or be looking at players like this to add to squad depth (if indeed, we are).

Also , nobody (other than twitter) is suggesting he'd be a player who'd cost £40 million.

Do you think the club should only sign players for the first team?
 

RedRover

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Exactly. :lol: Isn't it weird how so many take it as gospel whenever it's negative.
I also suspect that if Chelsea (or whoever) were linked with Henderson (young player, same age, decent season in the PL) for £40 million a lot of the people whinging about this on here would be apoplectic at such an insulting bid.
 

hobbers

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Double swoop for King and Brooks!!

Zero ambition signings are always much easier to pull off for some reason.
 

Redcy

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If we have players in the academy currently good enough to fill gaps to the required level then it stands to reason we wouldn't have the portables er have, or be looking at players like this to add to squad depth (if indeed, we are).

Also , nobody (other than twitter) is suggesting he'd be a player who'd cost £40 million.

Do you think the club should only sign players for the first team?

We should only buy players who could compete for a first team place, why would you buy anything else?
 

Ali Dia

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If we have players in the academy currently good enough to fill gaps to the required level then it stands to reason we wouldn't have the portables er have, or be looking at players like this to add to squad depth (if indeed, we are).

Also , nobody (other than twitter) is suggesting he'd be a player who'd cost £40 million.

Do you think the club should only sign players for the first team?
for 30/40 million yeah.
 

Jackal981

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Another one of these posters, fantastic :rolleyes:
They do seem to forget that Liverpool best players came from low table teams (Wijnaldum, Robertson, Mane for example). Imagine we were going after Wijnaldum when he was at Newcastle. The cafe would explode in anger :lol: . I remember when LVG was here and he was looking to get Mane, tons of caftards insulted him and Mane as crap player. Look how that turned out eh.
 

spe88

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They do seem to forget that Liverpool best players came from low table teams (Wijnaldum, Robertson, Mane for example). Imagine we were going after Wijnaldum when he was at Newcastle. The cafe would explode in anger :lol: . I remember when LVG was here and he was looking to get Mane, tons of caftards insulted him and Mane as crap player. Look how that turned out eh.
They don't seem to forget that Liverpool signed Downing, Carroll, Benteke either...
 

LuckyScout78

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If not Sancho. Federico Chiesa is the answer. Federico Chiesa is on Bruno level. Both skills and mentality like quick head and vision. United should go for Chiesa.

Buy Chiesa and keep Greenwood as RW, until United get Sancho or same quality for RW.

Again tight defend and parking bus:

Greenwood - Bruno - Chiesa + Martial/Rashford

Again top teams:

Chiesa - Bruno - Rashford + Greenwood/Martial

Depend on which team you are meeting. YOu use Chiesa and Rashford tracking back ability. Against tight defend. You need Martial and Greenwood one on one ability on wide sides.

David Brooks is a good player. But Brooks is not on Chiesa level. Clearly, not yet. If not Sancho, at least Bruno level. As a wide player.
 

harms

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I wouldn't mind us getting him as a squad option, but in no way is this a Sancho's replacement.
 

Ali Dia

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I agree, we clearly don't have the money to spend 30/40 million on bench options.

Spend everything we can on improving the starting 11. The players they replace become the bench options.
there are potential star quality players out there for even the very best teams for 40 million and less in any market. Lyon RBL Monaco Dortmund Munich Leicester Spurs of a few years ago and a few other clubs show it’s possible to assemble a good squad that can compete at the highest level on the cheap and relying on solid scouting and recruitment. Look at Gnabry Boateng and Davies 3 cheap players the club probably turned their noses up at. Keep your best players and occasionally sprinkle that with potential world class and you’re set. It’s the scouting/clubs approach that needs tweaking if we genuinely can’t find bargains at that price point and below. Matic needs replacing/rotating and that could be done for 40 million. Same with Shaw. If we can’t get sancho fair enough but don’t neglect the rest of the problems that actually can be fixed now.

Depth is achieved by fully challenging the likes of Bruno martial and Rashford with quality not buying average players happy to sit and collect a big wage and just about be serviceable when needed. The academy and maybe some high profile loans//bosman transfers should be used to pad out the squad if needs be while better new players transfer in and push old starters down the pecking order. we shouldn’t really currently need the likes of brooks Longstaff and king to make a squad given what we’re already spending, on top of that our own academy should be producing players of that potential standard or getting them in way earlier if we’ve genuinely been following for a long time. I also don’t understand why people don’t want to see as many top class young international players as possible come in to challenge here. At full strength we are currently a EL semi final/fighting for top 4 standard team. With injuries, normal fatigue and non linear development and without a few key signings things could get ugly again quick.

The project needs more quality as much as it needs squad depth and if we get this summer wrong Ole will probably pay with his job. If Ole has to go I hope we finally move Woodward and Judge aside and get a team who understands buying early and expensive is no bad thing if a world class scouting team flags the player up. I’m not talking about youth players. I’m taking 18-21 year olds who’ve already broken through elsewhere. Bayern style. Build the best scouting team money can buy and then fully trust them. Keep hiring attacking managers and coaches who’ll trust youth. Simple really on paper. obviously a bit harder in practice but at least that’s the blueprint.
 
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UNITED ACADEMY

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I wouldn't mind us getting him as a squad option, but in no way is this a Sancho's replacement.
Don't worry. I have a feeling we'll sign both. :drool:

Ighalo's deal also going to expired in January, makes sense to sign 2 attackers.
 

RUCK4444

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there are potential star quality players out there for even the very best teams for 40 million and less in any market. Lyon RBL Monaco Dortmund Munich Leicester Spurs of a few years ago and a few other clubs show it’s possible to assemble a good squad that can compete at the highest level on the cheap. Look at Gnabry Boateng and Davies 3 cheap players the club probably turned their noses up at. Keep your best players and occasionally sprinkle that with potential world class and you’re set. It’s the scouting/clubs approach that needs tweaking if we genuinely can’t find bargains at that price point and below. Matic needs replacing/rotating and that could be done for 40 million. Same with Shaw. If we can’t get sancho fair enough but don’t neglect the rest of the problems that actually can be fixed now.

Depth is achieved by fully challenging the likes of Bruno martial and Rashford with quality not buying average players happy to sit and collect a big wage and just about be serviceable when needed. The academy and maybe some high profile loans//bosman transfers should be used to pad out the squad if needs be while better new players transfer in and push old starters down the pecking order. we shouldn’t really currently need the likes of brooks Longstaff and king to make a squad given what we’re already spending, on top of that our own academy should be producing players of that potential standard or getting them in way earlier if we’ve genuinely been following for a long time. I also don’t understand why people don’t want to see as many top class young international players as possible come in to challenge here. At full strength we are currently a EL semi final/fighting for top 4 standard team. With injuries, normal fatigue and non linear development and without a few key signings things could get ugly again quick.

The project needs more quality as much as it needs squad depth and if we get this summer wrong Ole will probably pay with his job. If Ole has to go I hope we finally move Woodward and Judge aside and get a team who understands buying early and expensive is no bad thing if a world class scouting team flags the player up. I’m not talking about youth players. I’m taking 18-21 year olds who’ve already broken through elsewhere. Bayern style. Build the best scouting team money can buy and then fully trust them. Keep hiring attacking managers and coaches who’ll trust youth. Simple really on paper. obviously a bit harder in practice but at least that’s the blueprint.
Yes that's a fair point. We need depth but it needs to be quality, the problem we had after the restart was that we had players on the bench but Ole had absolutely no faith in them, there was a stat at the time showing how many more points we dropped when we strayed from our first choice starting 11 and it was quite damning.

This is the problem when our main transfer target is one of the most expensive available in Europe.
 

Ali Dia

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Yes that's a fair point. We need depth but it needs to be quality, the problem we had after the restart was that we had players on the bench but Ole had absolutely no faith in them, there was a stat at the time showing how many more points we dropped when we strayed from our first choice starting 11 and it was quite damning.

This is the problem when our main transfer target is one of the most expensive available in Europe.
Definitely. Our recruitment has to be a shambles when it’s sancho or bust though and we can seemingly only do one deal at a time when there’s so much work to do and bargains to be had. What I don’t get about Sancho is it’s not like we haven’t been chasing him for 2 years. We knew it would be around 100 million either way. Surely we’d already have 90% of the work done behind the scenes over the last few windows and some of the money put aside? Ok covid has changed the way we want to structure the deal. Fair enough but the price is close to the same. Agent fees and 2023 contract surely we already knew about etc so Everything just points to us being totally unprepared any time a transfer window rolls around. I really don’t know what our recruitment and contract team are at And it’s like this every single window. Waiting around for sancho to hand in a transfer request or David Brooks. Only at United....
 
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E-mal

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there are potential star quality players out there for even the very best teams for 40 million and less in any market. Lyon RBL Monaco Dortmund Munich Leicester Spurs of a few years ago and a few other clubs show it’s possible to assemble a good squad that can compete at the highest level on the cheap and relying on solid scouting and recruitment. Look at Gnabry Boateng and Davies 3 cheap players the club probably turned their noses up at. Keep your best players and occasionally sprinkle that with potential world class and you’re set. It’s the scouting/clubs approach that needs tweaking if we genuinely can’t find bargains at that price point and below. Matic needs replacing/rotating and that could be done for 40 million. Same with Shaw. If we can’t get sancho fair enough but don’t neglect the rest of the problems that actually can be fixed now.

Depth is achieved by fully challenging the likes of Bruno martial and Rashford with quality not buying average players happy to sit and collect a big wage and just about be serviceable when needed. The academy and maybe some high profile loans//bosman transfers should be used to pad out the squad if needs be while better new players transfer in and push old starters down the pecking order. we shouldn’t really currently need the likes of brooks Longstaff and king to make a squad given what we’re already spending, on top of that our own academy should be producing players of that potential standard or getting them in way earlier if we’ve genuinely been following for a long time. I also don’t understand why people don’t want to see as many top class young international players as possible come in to challenge here. At full strength we are currently a EL semi final/fighting for top 4 standard team. With injuries, normal fatigue and non linear development and without a few key signings things could get ugly again quick.

The project needs more quality as much as it needs squad depth and if we get this summer wrong Ole will probably pay with his job. If Ole has to go I hope we finally move Woodward and Judge aside and get a team who understands buying early and expensive is no bad thing if a world class scouting team flags the player up. I’m not talking about youth players. I’m taking 18-21 year olds who’ve already broken through elsewhere. Bayern style. Build the best scouting team money can buy and then fully trust them. Keep hiring attacking managers and coaches who’ll trust youth. Simple really on paper. obviously a bit harder in practice but at least that’s the blueprint.
You speak my mind brother.
Couldn't have put it any better.
 

hobbers

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The only way I would be satisfied with this signing is if we signed Chiesa, sold Lingard and signed Brooks as basically a massive upgrade for the subs bench.
 

Lee565

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Imagine it, snubbing signing ziyech for 25 million but spanking 35-40 million on a guy that is not good enough to really be a starter at our club IF we have any serious ambition to get closer to challenging for top honours. This would be a needless waste of money make do squad player signing like james.

Maybe if we hadn't signed james we could have put that extra 20 million transfer fee to paying dormund
 

Maureen-yo

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Definitely. Our recruitment has to be a shambles when it’s sancho or bust though and we can seemingly only do one deal at a time when there’s so much work to do and bargains to be had. What I don’t get about Sancho is it’s not like we haven’t been chasing him for 2 years. We knew it would be around 100 million either way. Surely we’d already have 90% of the work done behind the scenes over the last few windows and some of the money put aside? Ok covid has changed the way we want to structure the deal. Fair enough but the price is close to the same. Agent fees and 2023 contract surely we already knew about etc so Everything just points to us being totally unprepared any time a transfer window rolls around. I really don’t know what our recruitment and contract team are at And it’s like this every single window. Waiting around for sancho to hand in a transfer request or David Brooks. Only at United....
Maybe we haD been preparing pre COVID but like you stated, things have changed as a consequence. BVB want £120million up front which was probably more realistic when we didn’t lose £4-5million per home game in gate receipts during lockdown.
if the stories are to be believed we have now said we will still pay £120million but not upfront and it will be in instalments.
We are barely out of Europe after a ridiculously long season and people are judging the recruitment team for failing when the window is open for another 8 or so weeks.
 

christinaa

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Maybe we haD been preparing pre COVID but like you stated, things have changed as a consequence. BVB want £120million up front which was probably more realistic when we didn’t lose £4-5million per home game in gate receipts during lockdown.
if the stories are to be believed we have now said we will still pay £120million but not upfront and it will be in instalments.
We are barely out of Europe after a ridiculously long season and people are judging the recruitment team for failing when the window is open for another 8 or so weeks.
You're right but keep in mind that the PL starts very soon and any new players need to play a couple of friendly games to integrate with the rest of our team.
 

Maureen-yo

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You're right but keep in mind that the PL starts very soon and any new players need to play a couple of friendly games to integrate with the rest of our team.
I know. I think our first game is 6 weeks away roughly. However apart from Ake at City, Werner and Ziyech (I know I’ve probably spelt that wrong) at Chelsea . There hasn’t really been any “big” English clubs getting deals done early. I think everyone was wiring to see the impact on prices etc.
 

Inigo Montoya

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Imagine it, snubbing signing ziyech for 25 million but spanking 35-40 million on a guy that is not good enough to really be a starter at our club IF we have any serious ambition to get closer to challenging for top honours. This would be a needless waste of money make do squad player signing like james.

Maybe if we hadn't signed james we could have put that extra 20 million transfer fee to paying dormund
Who snubbed Ziyech? At least post a link to the story that we were in for him instead of making nonsense up
 

CallyRed

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Wouldn't mind him. Hope he owns the right wing and it becomes known as The Brookside