Did United Rebuild the Wrong Way Round?

Blood Mage said:
We did attempt to start with the defence, but the club didn't account for De Ligt being so injury prone or Yoro struggling to adapt to the league.
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Yeah first few signings were all defenders. Yoro, De Ligt, and Dorgu.
 
Walters_19_MuFc said:
Watching United at times, I wonder whether we’ve gone about this rebuild the wrong way round.

Last summer was basically about fixing the attack. Cunha, Mbeumo and Sesko came in and, to be fair, you could understand why. United desperately needed goals and all three have improved us in that department.

This summer, the attention has switched to midfield. Andrey Santos and Tielemans have already arrived, with Baleba the final piece of that particular rebuild.

So, if you look at the bigger picture, there seems to be a clear pattern.

2025: Attack.
2026: Midfield.
2027: Defence?

And that's where I wonder whether we've done it backwards.

There's that old saying: forwards win you games, defences win you titles.

Would we have been better off sorting the defence first, then building the midfield in front of it, before finally putting the finishing touches on the attack?

Because right now, Carrick is trying to play a pretty aggressive style of football with a defence that, for the most part, wasn't actually built for him. When the press works and we control games, it can look fine. When teams play through us or force us backwards, though, some of the same old problems are still there.

Yesterday's defeat to Hull was another reminder of that. And after the AC Milan game in pre season, there were already questions being asked about whether the centre back options were good enough for where United want to go.

Of course, you can't rebuild an entire squad in one window. We had massive problems everywhere when the rebuild started, and goals were arguably the biggest one. There's an argument that fixing the attack first gave Carrick enough firepower to get results while the rest of the team caught up.

But imagine doing it the other way. Building a quick, aggressive and dominant back four. Put a younger, more athletic midfield in front of them. Then go and spend big on the forwards once you've got the foundations in place.

Maybe we'd be less exciting initially, but perhaps we'd also be a lot harder to beat.

The good thing is that the midfield now looks sorted, so you'd imagine the defence will be the next major job.

The question is whether we'll look back at the end of the season and think United rebuilt the squad sensibly, one department at a time - or whether we spent two years decorating the house before fixing the foundations.
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Can't see how it could have gone in a different order. We clearly had to address the attack last season - we had no credible threat in that area. And without that, we could get nowhere, seeing as this was not and never will be a team organised primarily for defence. This season, we would have had a great gaping hole in midfield without new signings, which is simply impossible.

And don't get me started on "offence wins games, defence wins championships", which is the most idiotically misunderstood and misused saying this side of "it's the economy, stupid".

It's not a saying meant to be taken literally, which you'd think people would understand from the fact that it is literally absurd and self-contradictory (how do you win titles? By winning games. So, if offence wins games....). It does NOT mean that defence is more important than offence. Never has. Look at what distinguishes title-winning teams. Is it typically that they are the stingiest, most defensively efficient teams? Or is it that they are typically the most offensively dominant teams, loaded with attacking talent?

In short, "offence wins games, defence wins titles" is not a claim that defending is more important than attacking. It's not an analytical comment or a general truth about football that is valid in every sense. Taken as such, it's obvious and illogical rubbish. What it is is a motivational line, something that coaches tell players, because it IS true that you generally don't win titles if you don't play well defensively, even if you're a strong attacking team. And while good players rarely need to be reminded or prodded to be offensively adventurous, they often need exactly that to give sufficient emphasis and effort to being defensively responsible.
 
I think our defensive frailties are overly dramatic and it comes from Martinez and De Ligt. De Ligt is being classed as injury prone but actually he was fairly consistent for us until he got problems with his back and he has had an Op to correct it so we should be hopeful that he can put that behind him and get back to his best. I actually liked Yoro on the right and think it’ll be a good place to “learn the trade” like we did with Wes Brown and it also gives us height and pace in defence there.

Martinez IS injury prone but certainly our most cultured player in defence and the best passer of the ball, probably in the team (Bruno better at the decisive Hollywood pass sure). He used to be a left back, could we not give him another go there?

What I’m saying is we have tons of options I just don’t think we’re trying them out or seeing what pairings work. We’ve never given Maguire De Ligt a go, we’ve not tried Yoro either at RB or CB for a while or Martinez at LB. What we’ve done is stuck to this very rigid Maguire OR De Ligt with Martinez OR Heaven, Yoro out of favour and the LB and RB must be one of Shaw, Dalot or Maz.
 
Right, I will bother to do this now I'm at the computer and have a keyboard.

So I understand the approach of summer 2025, because there was pretty much no room for error. I do disagree fundamentally on splitting the work out in this way. The below sums it up quite well.

Making-sense-of-MVP-.jpg

If I look at how someone like Arsenal did it, they didn't do it that way at all.

2021/22:
Ben White - RB/CB
Ramsdale - GK
Odegaard - AM/CM
Tomiyasu - RB/CB
Lokonga - CM

2022/23
Jesus - CF
Zinchenko - LB
Viera - AM
Trossard - LW/AM
Kiwior - CB
Jorginho - DM/CM

2023/24
Rice - DM
Havertz - AM/CF
Timber - RB/CB
Raya - GK

2024/25
Califiori - LB/CB
Merino - CM

2025/26
Zubimendi - DM
Eze - AM
Gyokeres - CF
Madueke - RW
Mosquera - CB
Norgaard - CM
Hincape - CB

There was always a smattering of loans, like Sterling and super cheap options to fill the squad up. Notice every window they bought a CB and nearly all of them could play FB as well. Not once did they opt for this big bang approach on one area of the pitch, because it's not a holistic approach and leaves obvious gaps. If you look at those players, none of them are or were 'best in class' or the biggest prospects (bar Rice, obviously), they are the right tactical fit for the style they wanted to play. The bolded would be those a big part of the title winning squad. Gabriel came in the 20/21 season and Saliba was bought and loaned out from 19/20.

So to me, progressing the team by investingin the profiles you want to implement your tactics/game model and slowly replacing the quality is the most important. We seem to doing a sort of field of dreams model, where if you build one bit as best as you possibly can, the rest of the team will follow - which I think is futile. You will likely run out of a) time b) money and c) fan patience with this approach.

You can build the great posession midfield, but it's useless when your team sits in and the spare men you have (FBs or CBs), can't contribute to the attack. If you also build an attack that are suited to transition football (I would say Cunha, Mbuemo and Sesko all are. Wolves, Brentford, any RB team), it's not really going to marry with a possesion heavy midfield. There needs to be more joined up thinking, else you end up with a frankenstein again, of good individual players, but not a good team or squad.

So in my opinion, we haven't done it the wrong way round, we've done it the wrong way. I hope to be proven wrong and will take that humble pie with pleasure.
 
We need a left back before the window is over , that much is certain. Not talking about buttner, telles signing,. Someone who actually comes in and challenges Shaw for that LB position. He's been given a free run for far too long now. I'd go all out on Hall being honest.

Focus on CB next summer.
 
I personally don't hate the approach of attack first and work our way backwards, but I also don't think this was a choice, it was forced upon us due to contracts and player fallouts.

The problem we face this summer is it isn't just the midfield, we also need reinforcements in one of LB or LW and ST at a minimum, with CB also a debatable need too due to injuries.

Now we've finished the midfield rebuild I hope we have enough in the budget to go get David Raum for the reported £30m and then if we can sell/loan Zirkzee, I hope we can either sort an emergency option at ST or take a punt on someone young (like Franculino Dju) as I don't like Mbeumo or Cunha in that role at all.

That would leave us with the following to sort next summer:

LB to replace Shaw
RB to replace Mazraoui
CB to replace Maguire
CB to replace Martinez
LW to replace Rashford
 
I have no issue with the way the rebuild was done, but I do have an issue with the quality of player we have selected.

My biggest concerns are at LB where Shaw has no viable competition, same with RB where both players are consistently average.

But, the biggest loss from the rebuild is not investing heavily in a good striker when we should have done so.

The hardest thing to do in the game is score the goal and we have absolutely nobody with a natural knack of getting on the end of chances.
 
Adamsk7 said:
I think our defensive frailties are overly dramatic and it comes from Martinez and De Ligt. De Ligt is being classed as injury prone but actually he was fairly consistent for us until he got problems with his back and he has had an Op to correct it so we should be hopeful that he can put that behind him and get back to his best. I actually liked Yoro on the right and think it’ll be a good place to “learn the trade” like we did with Wes Brown and it also gives us height and pace in defence there.

Martinez IS injury prone but certainly our most cultured player in defence and the best passer of the ball, probably in the team (Bruno better at the decisive Hollywood pass sure). He used to be a left back, could we not give him another go there?

What I’m saying is we have tons of options I just don’t think we’re trying them out or seeing what pairings work. We’ve never given Maguire De Ligt a go, we’ve not tried Yoro either at RB or CB for a while or Martinez at LB. What we’ve done is stuck to this very rigid Maguire OR De Ligt with Martinez OR Heaven, Yoro out of favour and the LB and RB must be one of Shaw, Dalot or Maz.
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I don't think Martinez has the running capacity to play LB in the PL, certainly not for the kind of role FBs have at United.
 
CM lack some serious mobility and athleticism. Meanwhile defence is short and slow with fbs who offer nothing going forward
 
The manager sold or alienated or all our attackers at the end of the 1st season he was manager so we needed to do the attack 1st or what would our options have been last season Zirkzee and who else Amad was playing WB at the start of the season
 
Instead of getting attackers when we didn’t have an attack, a goalkeeper when we had two sieves as GK, and midfielders when we didn’t have a midfield, we should have gotten defenders to replace the very good defenders we had that in the future was going to get injured.

When we get a LB this week, we will have:

Dalot De Ligt Martinez Shaw
Mazraoui Maguire Yoro Heaven (Balde?)

That is not a bad defense, but if you compare it with the attack we had last summer …

Amad Fernandes Mount
Zirkzee Højlund (Dorgu? had only played LWB at that point)

… or the midfield we had this one …

Mainoo Mount? (Ugarte? No way!)

… then our defense was a fecking army of Jedi knights in comparizon.

We certainly have reinforced in the right order. Wether we have reinforced well enough so far, is a question for maybe February 2027.
 
Best defence wins the league. We ain't winning shit with these here. Arsenal were smart enough to start with the defence.
 
The squad was so poor and we needed so many players that there were going to be issues wherever they started. There is always too much to do, a midfielder should have been bought last summer or in January as having to buy three innone summer is not good enough.

It’s vital we sign 1-2 more players after Baleba this summer as otherwise we will remain behind the curve and have too much to do next summer. I would say the issue is not where they started but that they haven’t been able or haven’t wanted to buy enough players.
 
We clearly started with defensive signings under INEOS
 
Lash said:
Tune in next season, to see if INEOS will finish the rebuild!
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Individually the signings we made are good players. The problem lie in the group. Andrey, Mainoo and Tielemans are too lightweight to play together and they lack mobility. Baleba will help but we're back in a situation were if Baleba doesn't do well then we might struggle. We're still too dependent on Bruno as well whose both our best player and our curse (everything must pass from him). Then there's defense which is literally a nightmare. The FBs are useless, our first team CB are injury prone and our backup while having great potential is too young.
 
As has been said, we did build the defence first, with an almost entirely new backbone recruits.

Our issue with defending, certainly over the course of last 5 years, has been lack of awareness, loss of concentration and poor tactical planning (zonal marking vs man marking) at set pieces. Currently, its not being helped by not having a set-piece coach (I'm not sure Evans 'helping' here is doing us any favours!) so its a culmination of factors. We need to get a settled back 4 (players staying injury free would be great help) and recruit a proven set-piece coach and then working on the defenders concentration and awareness.
 
The problem is finances, we cant spend 400M like City/Pool in one window to fix all our problems, so it will be in phases and painful.
Maz/Yoro/Deligt didnt fix the issues, on top of that injuries to Martinez. If we got defence right in 2024 summer we could be in a better situation now.

Lemmens/Deligt/Yoro/Martinez/Heaven/Mainoo/Santos/Baleba/Youri/Cunha/Mbeumo/Amad/Sesko (a good group to start with at least)

I dont think its too bad, at least we are pooling a good group of players and by adding few more top quality players it only gets better.

I agree this team is crying out for width, we have so many tuck into middle so hope we add few good traditional wingers and full backs in next window.
 
Roboc7 said:
The squad was so poor and we needed so many players that there were going to be issues wherever they started. There is always too much to do, a midfielder should have been bought last summer or in January as having to buy three innone summer is not good enough.

It’s vital we sign 1-2 more players after Baleba this summer as otherwise we will remain behind the curve and have too much to do next summer. I would say the issue is not where they started but that they haven’t been able or haven’t wanted to buy enough players.
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This is the point people so often seem to miss. Fundamentally, there was just too much work to be done on this squad for any "rebuild" to be completed quickly.

The key is that we wasted so much money in the past that we ended up needing to reinforce positions that absolutely should not have needed reinforcements.

Benjamin Sesko was signed for around £75 million last summer. He's looked encouraging but was only a necessary signing because the £110 million we spent on Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee was basically a complete waste. Having spent that much on two fairly young strikers within the last five years, we absolutely should not have been needing to shell out another £75 million last summer to reinforce the striker position.

Bryan Mbeumo is another example. Another £70 million spent on a player who's had mixed reviews but has generally added much needed output to our attack. Again, though, an addition to the side at right-wing should not have been necessary given that we spent close to a club record fee of £85 million on Antony a couple of seasons prior. That investment should still be paying dividends for us now with Antony in his prime years but instead it was a complete waste because he just fundamentally was not of the required level.

Senne Lammens is another you could use. He was much cheaper at £20 million but even then, should that outlay really have been necessary when we'd spent £50 million two seasons prior on Onana? You'd expect a goalkeeper who cost that much to still be a starter after two seasons but again, because he was a complete disaster we had to reinforce the goalkeeper position last summer.

The overall point I'm trying to make here is that the teething problems and patchy form we're seeing at this stage is a punishment for years of reckless spending, primarily spearheaded by Richard Arnold and later on in INEOS' first summer at the club, which has yielded very little benefit to the current squad.
 
Mmm-Qatarian said:
This is the point people so often seem to miss. Fundamentally, there was just too much work to be done on this squad for any "rebuild" to be completed quickly.

The key is that we wasted so much money in the past that we ended up needing to reinforce positions that absolutely should not have needed reinforcements.

Benjamin Sesko was signed for around £75 million last summer. He's looked encouraging but was only a necessary signing because the £110 million we spent on Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee was basically a complete waste. Having spent that much on two fairly young strikers within the last five years, we absolutely should not have been needing to shell out another £75 million last summer to reinforce the striker position.

Bryan Mbeumo is another example. Another £70 million spent on a player who's had mixed reviews but has generally added much needed output to our attack. Again, though, an addition to the side at right-wing should not have been necessary given that we spent close to a club record fee of £85 million on Antony a couple of seasons prior. That investment should still be paying dividends for us now with Antony in his prime years but instead it was a complete waste because he just fundamentally was not of the required level.

Senne Lammens is another you could use. He was much cheaper at £20 million but even then, should that outlay really have been necessary when we'd spent £50 million two seasons prior on Onana? You'd expect a goalkeeper who cost that much to still be a starter after two seasons but again, because he was a complete disaster we had to reinforce the goalkeeper position last summer.

The overall point I'm trying to make here is that the teething problems and patchy form we're seeing at this stage is a punishment for years of reckless spending, primarily spearheaded by Richard Arnold and later on in INEOS' first summer at the club, which has yielded very little benefit to the current squad.
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100% spot on, our recruitment improved a lot in last 2 summers and cleaning up the lot of blunders we made in the past

Fitness, players attitude towards opponents outside Big 6 needs to be fixed ASAP but this team is really lacking the width and hope we aim to fix that along with fixing defence by adding a FB and CD.

Looks like we are not just far off, just 3 or 4 top class add-ins could elevate this team.
 
Ferguson always had the best forwards first and then good defenders to complete his team. Klopp did the same. You need to always start with the forwards to get confidence and excitement in the club and then you can do the boring but very important stuff of getting the midfield and defence right.
 
So much panicking. Midfield was the biggest weak link, we've bought 3 good midfielders to compliment Kobbie. Lets see where we are in a couple weeks before throwing toys out of the pram.
 
Walters_19_MuFc said:
Watching United at times, I wonder whether we’ve gone about this rebuild the wrong way round.

Last summer was basically about fixing the attack. Cunha, Mbeumo and Sesko came in and, to be fair, you could understand why. United desperately needed goals and all three have improved us in that department.

This summer, the attention has switched to midfield. Andrey Santos and Tielemans have already arrived, with Baleba the final piece of that particular rebuild.

So, if you look at the bigger picture, there seems to be a clear pattern.

2025: Attack.
2026: Midfield.
2027: Defence?

And that's where I wonder whether we've done it backwards.

There's that old saying: forwards win you games, defences win you titles.

Would we have been better off sorting the defence first, then building the midfield in front of it, before finally putting the finishing touches on the attack?

Because right now, Carrick is trying to play a pretty aggressive style of football with a defence that, for the most part, wasn't actually built for him. When the press works and we control games, it can look fine. When teams play through us or force us backwards, though, some of the same old problems are still there.

Yesterday's defeat to Hull was another reminder of that. And after the AC Milan game in pre season, there were already questions being asked about whether the centre back options were good enough for where United want to go.

Of course, you can't rebuild an entire squad in one window. We had massive problems everywhere when the rebuild started, and goals were arguably the biggest one. There's an argument that fixing the attack first gave Carrick enough firepower to get results while the rest of the team caught up.

But imagine doing it the other way. Building a quick, aggressive and dominant back four. Put a younger, more athletic midfield in front of them. Then go and spend big on the forwards once you've got the foundations in place.

Maybe we'd be less exciting initially, but perhaps we'd also be a lot harder to beat.

The good thing is that the midfield now looks sorted, so you'd imagine the defence will be the next major job.

The question is whether we'll look back at the end of the season and think United rebuilt the squad sensibly, one department at a time - or whether we spent two years decorating the house before fixing the foundations.
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The idea that you focus on a particular area each summer is absurd.

Finding three midfielders on one summer, than over three makes no sense at all.
 
Mmm-Qatarian said:
This is the point people so often seem to miss. Fundamentally, there was just too much work to be done on this squad for any "rebuild" to be completed quickly.

The key is that we wasted so much money in the past that we ended up needing to reinforce positions that absolutely should not have needed reinforcements.

Benjamin Sesko was signed for around £75 million last summer. He's looked encouraging but was only a necessary signing because the £110 million we spent on Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee was basically a complete waste. Having spent that much on two fairly young strikers within the last five years, we absolutely should not have been needing to shell out another £75 million last summer to reinforce the striker position.

Bryan Mbeumo is another example. Another £70 million spent on a player who's had mixed reviews but has generally added much needed output to our attack. Again, though, an addition to the side at right-wing should not have been necessary given that we spent close to a club record fee of £85 million on Antony a couple of seasons prior. That investment should still be paying dividends for us now with Antony in his prime years but instead it was a complete waste because he just fundamentally was not of the required level.

Senne Lammens is another you could use. He was much cheaper at £20 million but even then, should that outlay really have been necessary when we'd spent £50 million two seasons prior on Onana? You'd expect a goalkeeper who cost that much to still be a starter after two seasons but again, because he was a complete disaster we had to reinforce the goalkeeper position last summer.

The overall point I'm trying to make here is that the teething problems and patchy form we're seeing at this stage is a punishment for years of reckless spending, primarily spearheaded by Richard Arnold and later on in INEOS' first summer at the club, which has yielded very little benefit to the current squad.
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Hard to disagree with much of this. I also think it's important to mention that because of all the wasted money and diminishing war chest, we couldn't afford to make any more expensive mistakes. This is why they've tried really hard to identify low risk players (read PL proven, more often than not) like Cunha and Mbuemo. These signings raise the floor of the team, and maybe less so the ceiling.

Once you have that foundation, and maybe a bit more cash in the bank from a couple of UCL runs, then you can start adding a few stand out players. We also have to hope that some of the younger players were have invested in, like Yoro, Sesko and Baleba, continue to grow and meet their potential.
 
ClaytonBlackmoorLeftPeg said:
The idea that you focus on a particular area each summer is absurd.

Finding three midfielders on one summer, than over three makes no sense at all.
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Yes obviously you would never do it that way, but such was the poor squad management and transfer strategy of years gone by, we ended up in this position.

Also, pretty sure INEOS led recruitment have signed 4 defenders who have played for the first team (MDL, Maz, Yoro and Heaven) so this idea they've completely neglected that area is absurd.
 
We should have rebuilt the midfield years ago. We've had a couple of seasons where we've just about been able to scrape through because Casemiro/Eriksen and Casemiro/Mainoo worked to an ok level. Other seasons the midfield has been disastrous.
 
devilish said:
Individually the signings we made are good players. The problem lie in the group. Andrey, Mainoo and Tielemans are too lightweight to play together and they lack mobility. Baleba will help but we're back in a situation were if Baleba doesn't do well then we might struggle. We're still too dependent on Bruno as well whose both our best player and our curse (everything must pass from him). Then there's defense which is literally a nightmare. The FBs are useless, our first team CB are injury prone and our backup while having great potential is too young.
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I want to see a bit more of the combinations before making a full judgement, but it does feel like we should have gone for 2 x athletic profiles.
 
Blood Mage said:
We did attempt to start with the defence, but the club didn't account for De Ligt being so injury prone or Yoro struggling to adapt to the league.
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Agree. We are lucky to have Maguire stepping up and plugging in. One way or another, the problem of De Ligt / Martinez / Yoro and to a certain extent, Maguire's retirement, will have to wait until next season. So really don't know why people are putting MU on the Champion contender list, we are at least 1 season away, all because of the disastrous recruitment during the past 5 seasons.
 
Mike Smalling said:
We should have rebuilt the midfield years ago. We've had a couple of seasons where we've just about been able to scrape through because Casemiro/Eriksen and Casemiro/Mainoo worked to an ok level. Other seasons the midfield has been disastrous.
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It isnt even about a rebuild, per say. We just haven't been able to make one top quality defensive/box to box midfield signing for years.

Casemiro did well for two of his four years, but cost us a fortune.

At least two of the three we have signed this summer need to stick. Or at the very least, do a good job for a couple of years and not be sold for pennys on the pound.
 
Attack needed sorting badly. I feel this season we needed a cb over one of the midfielders. I love Heaven but starting the season with a 19 year old CB who isn't fully developed is madness.
 
Most people here certainly can’t moan about signings 3x midfielders as that’s what the majority of the site wanted.
 
Crimson King said:
Yes obviously you would never do it that way, but such was the poor squad management and transfer strategy of years gone by, we ended up in this position.

Also, pretty sure INEOS led recruitment have signed 4 defenders who have played for the first team (MDL, Maz, Yoro and Heaven) so this idea they've completely neglected that area is absurd.
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Lammens

Heaven
MDL
Yoro
Maz

Dorgu
Tielemans
Santos

Cunha
Mbeumo
Sesko

Subs
Ugarte
Zirkzee
Darlow

+ Baleba.

They have bought across the pitch.
 
gaffs said:
I want to see a bit more of the combinations before making a full judgement, but it does feel like we should have gone for 2 x athletic profiles.
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I think that we want all in on the ball possession/passing front only to panic once our lightweight midgets at CM got owned by Milan. Don't take me wrong some of my favorite players were all under 6ft tall. Baresi, Maradona, Scholes and Baggio to name a few. However this is the EPL and physicality + height is important.
 
TheRedHearted said:
No it wasn’t, it wasn’t just one game man, it was catastrophic, devastating, embarrassing, (every other click bait word). We had zero shots, not 20, and not 72 percent possession we had zero percent possession.
We never touched the ball once dude.

We never even had one pass…
One game?
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100%. Shut it all down, it’s over.
 
Lash said:
Right, I will bother to do this now I'm at the computer and have a keyboard.

So I understand the approach of summer 2025, because there was pretty much no room for error. I do disagree fundamentally on splitting the work out in this way. The below sums it up quite well.

Making-sense-of-MVP-.jpg

If I look at how someone like Arsenal did it, they didn't do it that way at all.

2021/22:
Ben White - RB/CB
Ramsdale - GK
Odegaard - AM/CM
Tomiyasu - RB/CB
Lokonga - CM

2022/23
Jesus - CF
Zinchenko - LB
Viera - AM
Trossard - LW/AM
Kiwior - CB
Jorginho - DM/CM

2023/24
Rice - DM
Havertz - AM/CF
Timber - RB/CB
Raya - GK

2024/25
Califiori - LB/CB
Merino - CM

2025/26
Zubimendi - DM
Eze - AM
Gyokeres - CF
Madueke - RW
Mosquera - CB
Norgaard - CM
Hincape - CB

There was always a smattering of loans, like Sterling and super cheap options to fill the squad up. Notice every window they bought a CB and nearly all of them could play FB as well. Not once did they opt for this big bang approach on one area of the pitch, because it's not a holistic approach and leaves obvious gaps. If you look at those players, none of them are or were 'best in class' or the biggest prospects (bar Rice, obviously), they are the right tactical fit for the style they wanted to play. The bolded would be those a big part of the title winning squad. Gabriel came in the 20/21 season and Saliba was bought and loaned out from 19/20.

So to me, progressing the team by investingin the profiles you want to implement your tactics/game model and slowly replacing the quality is the most important. We seem to doing a sort of field of dreams model, where if you build one bit as best as you possibly can, the rest of the team will follow - which I think is futile. You will likely run out of a) time b) money and c) fan patience with this approach.

You can build the great posession midfield, but it's useless when your team sits in and the spare men you have (FBs or CBs), can't contribute to the attack. If you also build an attack that are suited to transition football (I would say Cunha, Mbuemo and Sesko all are. Wolves, Brentford, any RB team), it's not really going to marry with a possesion heavy midfield. There needs to be more joined up thinking, else you end up with a frankenstein again, of good individual players, but not a good team or squad.

So in my opinion, we haven't done it the wrong way round, we've done it the wrong way. I hope to be proven wrong and will take that humble pie with pleasure.
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Great post.
 
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