Only scenario in which we don't miss Fred is if Mount plays 100% of the time. Eriksen is done and we knew this before the season started. Hannibal was never going to make it here, I don't think he was ever seriously considered by ETH and I don't disagree with this. McTominay is more of an attacker these days anyway.
I hear this a lot but if we didn't replace him properly, and would have been better off keeping him, then how was it the correct decision. Never mind that he still had a few years left, compared to others (Herrera, Pogba)
He had a year left. But whatever we got back in fee for him, we spent on Ambrabat's loan fee for the year
That’s fair. The whole McFred thing was a terrible plan to begin with given neither of them are DM’s and it’s laughable we persisted with it as long as we did. It’s a shame Matic dropped off the way he did too, he was perfect as the pivot!
Absolutely. And they didn’t compliment each others skill sets one bit - actually they probably brought out the worst of each other.
i have to laugh when I think about it, or I might just end up crying!I can’t understand you guys claiming he had moments where he barely looked as a footballer. Name me 1 game. He definitely had more games good than bad. Case Fred partnership was the best we had. Selling him was the last of our issues and was a big mistake. As we can see now. 20/20 games won. Can’t believe it
i mean there were plenty of times throughout games where he would take an absolute hilarious of a touch/pass that a rec league player would damn near have. I dont give a feck what he is doing over in turkey with the one dominant team pretty much there. He is just not the quality of midfielder we need. To be a top level player you cant have the level of inconsistency he has shown in the premier league. Im glad his team is doing well over in turkey but still doesnt change how he was over here for us
exactly. It is like people have either completely forgotten what he was like here during his time or think that by saying he isnt good enough that we are saying he is just some absolute dog shit piece of player. Most tend to forget even the worst premier league player would look like messi in his prime against the usual sunday league team. The standards in the premier league are just that high that it isnt wrong to think that perfectly adequate players can just be not good enough at this level and still be a professional player somewhere else
That would be like selling McT to Celtic and claiming he shouldn't have been sold because they won 20 games with him in the team.
Agreed, I remember one match where he passed it directly into touch from about 10 yards, under no pressure and with no player in the vicinity. His energy and tenacity was good in some matches but that was it. Technically he was poor and often targeted by the oppo. The fact that he's ended up in Turkey says it all
fair enough point. On the other hand, we’ve had plenty of players leaving the club, how many of those actually was a success at their new club?? Can name one? Fred is an asset!
He was never good enough. Shouldn't have lasted more than 2 seasons at the club.
I mean all players do some bad stuff.. Bruno is our captain and maybe our most important player. You can say the same about him? from time to time he does some shit that makes one wonder how he is a pro footballer right? Doesn’t mean he isn’t quality. If we sum up Fred last season he did more good than bad. I can name at least 6 players we should have sold before Fred.
A lot of those players went to lesser clubs, in a different context. Their post-Utd success doesn't necessarily warrant a retroactive rewriting of their time here. Fred simply wasn't good enough for us (Good Fred was, but he was way too inconsistent), and it was normal to move him on.
Yeah if only we were better than some Turkish team eh? But we’ll never know unless we meet a team in champions.. oh wait
The unfortunate thing is that Matic and Fred never combined well in the early days. In theory Fred should have just come in and taken Herrera's spot so we could keep on with the Matic-Pogba-Herrera (Fred) combo that did so well in 18/19, but that combo just didn't work. I think it was likely because all three of Matic, Pogba and Fred tended to drift to the left, so it ended up with a badly balanced midfield both in and out of possession.
What's weird about it? A player might have a great engine but there's more to football to that. Gattuso was probably one of the most limited CM's in modern times but his ability to read the game, stick to a player like glue and disrupt them at the right moment made him one of the most difficult players to play against. Same can be said (to a slightly kinder way) to Park who absolutely annihilated Pirlo in his prime. Fred lacks those mental attributes. He can run all day, his skill with the ball isn't that bad (when compared to players of that kind like Gattuso or Savage) but he simply lack the elite judgement an elite player in that position have. The technical aspect is a nice add on in that position. It can transform a Gattuso into a Keane or a Rijkaard. However its a position were brains often beats technique everytime.
If we had not sold him for 8M, we wouldn’t have had to pay 9M or so for Amrabat but that’s how Murtough does his business. Penny wise, pound foolish.
We could have sold McT for 3 times the money we got for Fred. Kept Fred for one more year and let him go on a free this summer. Mount would also have been free this summer and we wouldn’t have to look at McT galloping around doing nothing anymore. No Amrabat. We are up 80/90 million there in that scenario. Crazy
Yup.
There’s no guarantee Mount ends up here if everyone is in the mix to sign him on a free. Letting Fred go was the right decision, unfortunately all the other decisions surrounding it, such as keeping McTominay and buying Amrabat, were wrong. As always.
In this case, we shouldn't have sold him because we then spent even more money than his fee to get amrabat on loan to replace him, who is a worse player.
We didn't sell him because he's worse than McTominay or Amrabat, we sold him because ETH doesn't value #8s, you are either a #6 or a #10.
So even more positives.
He was sold for 2 reasons.
So why did we get amarabat, who is clearly worse?
He was sold becuase we have idiots in charge of recruitment.
Fixed.
Who knows? That move hasn't worked out at all.
Potentially, but a different argument.
Amrabat has had no time to spin up and adjust to the pace and intensity of the PL. He is a loanee from a lower league being asked to be a £100m player and being asked to control the midfield by himself. That he isn’t suddenly a world class player should not have been a surprise to anyone. I haven’t given up on Amrabat being part of a functioning midfield. At least he is a 6 being played as a 6. Fred would be even worse in that role. I hope they make Fred mayor of the city, but I was so relieved when he finally left.
These replies sum it up perfectly. The squad management was/is atrocious. Personally, injuries aside, I still don’t mind the Mount transfer long term. Think he’s a very good player and we need a big squad. I also don’t think he’d have gone for free this summer, they’d have sold him elsewhere if not for us moving so early.
