Expensive mistakes: 1 down, 1 to go

UncleBob

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We’re are the club that over the past several years acted irrationally and irresponsibly with respect to player’s wages. Our wage structure (imo) has been a total joke for some time now (given the actual payback). I know a lot of it has come as a by product of our desperation but a lot of the mistakes are simply a very poor judgement and are not down to any real pressure.

Asset protection strategy has been comical to say the least but the most painful calls are those that have no real analogous in the whole footballing world.

First Sanchez, and a few years later (you would think we would have learned by that point) we go out of our way and give evidently (off the back of the worst season with us) a declining GK unseen wages (3x the nearest best paid in the same position).

Question 1. Why was this sudden urge with no real motivating factor to give such a unimaginable contract?

Question 2. Would there be any realistic takers out there who wouldn’t be put off by such a salary? Even for free similar to Sanchez (at least he’s an outfield player).

Question 3. We’re hearing the reports about us closing in on securing Henderson’s signature, which reportedly would make him 2nd best paid GK in the world without him playing for us once. Why do we do that?
Weird rant.

The motivating factor was rather simple, he either signs a new contract or he doesn't, and if he doesn't that means having to bring in a replacement at a time where we had other priorities, combine this with good goalkeepers not exactly being easily available or cheap and it's not exactly difficult to understand. Liverpool and Chelsea's record fees for goalkeepers the same summer, Kepa for £71mill, meant that you weren't getting any bargains.

So it's a calculated risk where you look at the alternatives and choose the least painful one.
 
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By decent do you mean 15m?
Miki was a £10-15m player, that all we would have got for him. We would have struggled to sell him. He’s hardly been pulling up trees since he left.

We know Sanchez was an appalling transfer, but add in the Miki end, it’s got to be one of the worst swap deal’s ever done. Usually one side loses out, in this case it’s very clearly a lose/ lose scenario.
 

hmchan

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At the time he signed his contract his decline was still open to debate. He’d had one meh season, but that was off the back of umpteen great seasons before it. Bear in mind that he’s still young for a goalkeeper, so a permanent decline seemed unlikely.

Obviously by now its clear that it wasn’t just a blip, two poor seasons in a row is more than just that. But I don’t think it was a wild gamble at the time, even if it’s turned out badly for us.
I understand what you mean but I view this differently. To me de Gea's decline had been pretty evident by that time and it wasn't much a debate. We were talking about a year of mediocre performance after the World Cup along with a series of terrible mistakes, not an one-off incident. People tried to make up a debate just because they were lenient and sentimental, they just crossed their fingers and hoped he'd somehow return to his best one day but it wasn't gonna happen (some still are nowadays).
 

Number32

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Pretty sure de Gea was no longer the "de Gea couple years ago" when he was offered the ridiculous contract.
I agree, but the situation was different. We didn't have any plan B for him, Mourinho desperately needs points to keep his job, Woodward was just a businessman who wants "keeping asset".
 

Kostov

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Miki was a £10-15m player, that all we would have got for him. We would have struggled to sell him. He’s hardly been pulling up trees since he left.

We know Sanchez was an appalling transfer, but add in the Miki end, it’s got to be one of the worst swap deal’s ever done. Usually one side loses out, in this case it’s very clearly a lose/ lose scenario.
Mkhi was also very bad for us in that last period, and was also on big wages you can imagine. How it turned out for both us and Arsenal is comical.
 

UncleBob

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Mkhi was also very bad for us in that last period, and was also on big wages you can imagine. How it turned out for both us and Arsenal is comical.
It would surprise me if Mkhi was on large wages.
 

Chesterlestreet

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Kepa is on £140k per week :)
If not more (according to some sources).

Anyway, there should be a handful who are on more than decent money - which means that it would be pretty insane to make Henderson the 2nd best paid in the world. Hopefully nothing but bollocks rumours.
 

ghagua

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Ah, hindsight! At the time when De Gea signed his contract, everyone would have given their firstborn for that to happen.
 

hobbers

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Oblak and Courtois will definitely be on a lot more than 100k.
 

liamp

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Biggest mistake is believing unreliable sites for wages, somehow all Liverpool players are paid nothing but when it comes to total wages, the difference between 2 teams is Sanchez.


So maybe their players are not on low wages and journalists report different wages differently, like including all possible bonuses for one team and reporting just basic for other team.
There are a couple of caveats for this. One is how each club accounts for their wages and the both legitimate and slightly more dubious ways that can happen. The other is that this is intended to be the wage bill for all club staff. It would be interesting to see a breakdown for just players.
 

Bastian

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One action provides a blanket solution going forward, a meaningful DoF.
 

Rozay

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Sanchez wasn't on a free. Mkhitaryan would have fetched a decent transfer fee if he was sold independently.
And we would have then had to spend that money on a player. We paid for Sanchez the day we bought Mkhitaryan from Dortmund. Halfway through, we just crossed Mkhitariyan’s name out, and wrote Alexis. The only difference was wages.
 

Nytram Shakes

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We have got really lucky with the Sanchez thing, only having him to pay 10 million to get him off the books is steal. To be honest, we should have learnt after what happened with Rooney before that, we got really lucky that Everton came in for him, but consistently hoping that someone more stupid will come in and bail us out of us offering contract far beyond what the player is worth is not a sustainable model.
The worst thing is we aren't learning, the De Gea contract was mental, and is going to hang over us for a long time. Unless we find another even more retarded club willing to come and in and come close to matching the largest wage and contract ever given out to a keeper, we are either going to have to keep a keeper who is obviously on the decline for another 5 years or have the best-paid goalkeeper in the world sitting int the stands...
We have also had issues with Rojo, Jones...... the 3 year Matic contract is equally stupid, yes he has had a great few months but this time last year it looked like was pretty much finished.... giving him another year was fine, but we offered him 3 when he had already signed up for 1, which was perfect. But no we put ourselves on the line for another 3..... stupid.
 

Mr. MUJAC

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Walter Crickmer started it all...
We’re are the club that over the past several years acted irrationally and irresponsibly with respect to player’s wages. Most clubs do the same so not sure how this is such a strange thing? Our wage structure (imo) has been a total joke for some time now (given the actual payback). Do you actually know what the wage structure is? If so could you share it please...including bonuses so we can see what you referring to? I know a lot of it has come as a by product of our desperation but a lot of the mistakes are simply a very poor judgement and are not down to any real pressure. All managers since Ferguson have been under pressure, but agreed poor judgement is a factor.

Asset protection strategy has been comical to say the least but the most painful calls are those that have no real analogous in the whole footballing world.

First Sanchez, and a few years later (you would think we would have learned by that point) we go out of our way and give evidently (off the back of the worst season with us) a declining GK unseen wages (3x the nearest best paid in the same position).

Question 1. Why was this sudden urge with no real motivating factor to give such a unimaginable contract? Which contract are you talking about?

Question 2. Would there be any realistic takers out there who wouldn’t be put off by such a salary? Even for free similar to Sanchez (at least he’s an outfield player).

Question 3. We’re hearing the reports about us closing in on securing Henderson’s signature, which reportedly would make him 2nd best paid GK in the world without him playing for us once. Why do we do that? Is that newspaper talk or you aware of a real offer?
Apart from the Sanchez deal which is an outlier (I agree it was a bizarre transfer), all the other deals seem within the norms of the top 6. United will always get screwed on transfers because of who we are. That's been going on for nearly 50 years.
 

Beans

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Ah, hindsight! At the time when De Gea signed his contract, everyone would have given their firstborn for that to happen.
At the time it did feel like losing De Gea, our only internationally recognizable star besides Pogba, would be a painful blow. To recruit good players you need to already have some good players! And of course Pogba didn't seem long for the team at the time to most, which added to the feeling of uncertainty. We just sold Lukaku and loaned Sanchez, you could be forgiven for worrying that we were running out of quality. And of course our first half of the season was poor.

So yeah, hindsight.
 

hmchan

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We have got really lucky with the Sanchez thing, only having him to pay 10 million to get him off the books is steal. To be honest, we should have learnt after what happened with Rooney before that, we got really lucky that Everton came in for him, but consistently hoping that someone more stupid will come in and bail us out of us offering contract far beyond what the player is worth is not a sustainable model.
The worst thing is we aren't learning, the De Gea contract was mental, and is going to hang over us for a long time. Unless we find another even more retarded club willing to come and in and come close to matching the largest wage and contract ever given out to a keeper, we are either going to have to keep a keeper who is obviously on the decline for another 5 years or have the best-paid goalkeeper in the world sitting int the stands...
We have also had issues with Rojo, Jones...... the 3 year Matic contract is equally stupid, yes he has had a great few months but this time last year it looked like was pretty much finished.... giving him another year was fine, but we offered him 3 when he had already signed up for 1, which was perfect. But no we put ourselves on the line for another 3..... stupid.
The most terrible part is that we might lose Henderson because of that.
 

Sky1981

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Under the bright neon lights of sincity
We’re are the club that over the past several years acted irrationally and irresponsibly with respect to player’s wages. Our wage structure (imo) has been a total joke for some time now (given the actual payback). I know a lot of it has come as a by product of our desperation but a lot of the mistakes are simply a very poor judgement and are not down to any real pressure.

Asset protection strategy has been comical to say the least but the most painful calls are those that have no real analogous in the whole footballing world.

First Sanchez, and a few years later (you would think we would have learned by that point) we go out of our way and give evidently (off the back of the worst season with us) a declining GK unseen wages (3x the nearest best paid in the same position).

Question 1. Why was this sudden urge with no real motivating factor to give such a unimaginable contract?

Question 2. Would there be any realistic takers out there who wouldn’t be put off by such a salary? Even for free similar to Sanchez (at least he’s an outfield player).

Question 3. We’re hearing the reports about us closing in on securing Henderson’s signature, which reportedly would make him 2nd best paid GK in the world without him playing for us once. Why do we do that?
110k / week = 5M / Year
5 years of service = 25M

If he doesn't sign, good luck finding another good keeper with 25M, why haggle over an extra 30-40k / week (which amounts to 12M?) penny pinching and let our prospective GK walks away?

Simple Math

There are stupid deals we've done, this wasn't it, and this wasn't the time to play mr. penny pincher. Not when it's peanuts by today's standard