I do see the plan. Here's my OVERLY thought out opinion of our team, our direction and our current crop of players. First, I think we've fallen into a tough situation in recruitment. This may hurt those of us that believe we're the "biggest" club in world football. The Top top players don't want to come to united atm. Name any of them... Neymar (haha haha, no thx), Bale (also haha), Ronaldo (rumored to have been offered a return), Ramos, Boateng (a yr or 2 ago when we went in for him) just as a few examples. With this as the backdrop, we've hired Moyes which basically got Fellaini, we hired Van Gaal who bought a few useful players but nobody near the top of the game, and Jose... and after these failed tenures, we decided to go with a United legend in Ole Gunner, buy very good but yet unproven and undeveloped youth and have patience (although I challenge how much patience we'd ultimately have had if things continued on a floundering track). The reality is that we went with youth but needed to see improvement and development to allow us to stick to it.
This week was absolutely essential to allow us more time to see out this current project, to allow James, and Fred and McTominay to continue to develop.
That said, I think of the 15-18 top players needed in championship winning side, we only have a small percentage of those players in the club atm. I think the following players could play a role over the next few years in a premier league championship quality team: DDG, Mcgwire, Lindelof, Bissaka, Pogba, Rashford, Daniel James with Lingard, Fred, Shaw and Martial as squad players or rotational players on a top top team. I suppose I'm saying that we need a truly top striker and I think we desperately need a partner for McTominay (I'm a huge fan of his).
Fred has had 2 great performances, on the heels of many dismal showings and Pereira shouldn't be on the field in a top quality team. Still too early to tell for Greenwood IMO.
I think the place to start is to go get Timo Warner from Germany and get a Rakatic or Kante type to anchor the midfield along with Scott. Spend 200M on these 2 in January and give us a running head start in chemistry going into next season. Ultimately, we'll need a more dependable left back as I like a healthy and in shape Shaw but he's proven unreliable. We need more high quality depth in the midfield and frankly more quality options to allow Ole to find the right combinations and/or even tactically change up the team depending on opponents.
What gives me great confidence is the fact that we have the resources to spend, like no other team in the world and we have a decent blueprint.... We just need a world class brain making those decisions to find the next Kante if we can't go buy him from Chelsea! Not sure Ed Woodward has the ability to do this so put people around him or take this responsibility from him to get this done ASAP!