As gorgeous as that team is, and trying not to be too much of a party-pooper, I don't think either signing would have been realistic in 1994. Neither United nor the English league had the clout it would earn a decade later. Batistuta had stayed with Fiorentina even when they were relegated to Serie B and would surely have had Milan and Juve jostling for his signature had he seriously entertained a move. Redondo too was better suited to Spain in terms of style and culture and I cannot see him turning down Real to gamble on a switch to England.The Argie duo of Batistuta and Redondo after we sold Dublin to Coventry and Gillespie to Newcastle in 1994. The former would have been sensational in front of Cantona...as well as a superb focal point for Giggs and Beckham, and the latter would complement Keane really well in that he could effortlessly dictate the game while Keane went from box to box. Ideally timed for the scrapping of the three-foreigner rule in the Champions League (Link), and Fergie (as well as Cantona) might have won it before 1999 with this Front 6...
If you could rewrite history...
- Thread starter sparx99
- Start date
Why would you say that? It's not like SAF had a thing against giving young players a chance...
The team had adjusted to accommodate Berbatov that season I thought ?
Towards the end he was a bit reluctant to promote youth, understandably because experienced players gave him more of a chance of winning and he wanted to win. Pogba would have been like 6th or 7th midfielder that season.
Batigol and Cantona. id take that now.
Signing the right manager right after Fergie retired. Oh and keeping Woodward away from the football side of things.
Pogba started 18 Serie A games that year. In that same year the only midfielders we had were Scholes, Carrick, Cleverly and Anderson (Fletcher was sick). Carrick started 36 games and Cleverly had the 2nd most starts with 18. Pogba would have had plenty of starts that season. Probably just as many as he had at Juve if not more...
I'd go along with this.
Jose stays for 3 years, continues winning trophies for us, replacing a few players every year, then hands over to the next manager.
Should have got Shearer. He is the one that would have brought more Champions leagues
Yep, don't really disagree with that — both of them were better cultural fits for those leagues, plus Serie A was the “place to be” at the time and Redondo had a really good relationship with Valdano (who also joined Madrid from Tenerife in 1994), so any move to United would have been improbable at best. It's just...I really wanted to see that Front 6 on a tactical sheet, and this thread gave me a can't-miss excuse to post it!
I would have begged Fergie to not leave us.
We all should have done that.
We all should have done that.
Yeah, it gets the juices flowing in the same way that the '99 midfield plus linked targets Nedved or Rivaldo does.Yep, don't really disagree with that — both of them were better cultural fits for those leagues, plus Serie A was the “place to be” at the time and Redondo had a really good relationship with Valdano (who also joined Madrid from Tenerife in 1994), so any move to United would have been improbable at best. It's just...I really wanted to see that Front 6 on a tactical sheet, and this thread gave me a can't-miss excuse to post it!
Actually, United low-balled an offer to PSV after the player had agreed to join the club. The negotiations stalled then fell off, Chelsea swooped in.
Wasn't Batitusta the rumored signing that requested goal-scoring bonuses that led SAF to say something like, "That's your job - to score goals."?
Think that was around 1998 when numerous strikers were rumored to be in talks with the club.
Wow.
The knock on effect of changing history could go either way though.
Imagine we'd brought Shearer instead of Solskjaer.
Would we have won more as a total? Impossible to say. We surely wouldn't have had a better season than the treble year though.
Imagine if Aguero hadn't pinched that title. Fergie would have retired, we wouldn't have bought Van Persie, and we wouldn't have hit back in style.
But it would have meant Gill and Fergie didn't leave at the same time - our first colossal mistake.
Would we still have gone for Moyes? Or would other targets have been available?
Impossible to say.
Imagine we'd brought Shearer instead of Solskjaer.
Would we have won more as a total? Impossible to say. We surely wouldn't have had a better season than the treble year though.
Imagine if Aguero hadn't pinched that title. Fergie would have retired, we wouldn't have bought Van Persie, and we wouldn't have hit back in style.
But it would have meant Gill and Fergie didn't leave at the same time - our first colossal mistake.
Would we still have gone for Moyes? Or would other targets have been available?
Impossible to say.
Yes we would - There's been stats and researched on this, and the amount we've spent on servicing debt is about equal to what City have spent more than us
I think we still would have gone for Robin. We wouldn't have given City a free ride to sign him after the season he had for Arsenal.
He genuinely was incredible and I think it's forgotten how good he was that year. It would have been frightening if we had no interest in him.
Yeah but the money spent servicing the debt wouldn't be staying in the club for Managers to spend on players, it would have gone to the shareholders instead, or most of it.
The interest we've paid on our debt has been 60m on average each year (786 / 13 years) under the Glazers. I highly doubt that we'd spent 60m each year paying shareholders. To compare, Glazers take out about 10-13m on average right now from dividends.
On top of this, the old owners could have sold shares like Glazers have done for 452m combined - So I guess if the old shareholders wanted more money for themselves, they could've done an expansion of shares like Glazers, or simply expanded shares to raise more money for the club to spend. Right now, none of the share sales (452m) under Glazer have gone on to be invested in United, from what I understand.
To me buying this player or that is a lottery - you have no way of knowing if they would replicate their success in a different team. I feel the single biggest change would have been for United to have been bought by someone like Bill Gates or a similar wealthy philanthropist in the late 90's or early 2000's.
Whilst a corporate environment is not by any means perfect they would have had a better succession plan in mind for Ferguson's replacement than the Glazers did. Ferguson would have been replaced by the best manager candidate available at the time....not necessarily Mourinho as I do not believe he would have had the success he did had United gone into a dip in form and a lack of competitiveness in the transfer market.
The last few years of Ferguson's reign were him battling with less resources and being mired in conflict with players like Keane, or with business partners like Magniers. With consistent investment we would have been dominant in Europe and could even have maybe stopped Ronaldo's head from being turned by Madrid.
Companies should be run like a family, but not necessarily by one, and certainly not one as dysfunctional as the Glazers and their Acolytes have been.
Whilst a corporate environment is not by any means perfect they would have had a better succession plan in mind for Ferguson's replacement than the Glazers did. Ferguson would have been replaced by the best manager candidate available at the time....not necessarily Mourinho as I do not believe he would have had the success he did had United gone into a dip in form and a lack of competitiveness in the transfer market.
The last few years of Ferguson's reign were him battling with less resources and being mired in conflict with players like Keane, or with business partners like Magniers. With consistent investment we would have been dominant in Europe and could even have maybe stopped Ronaldo's head from being turned by Madrid.
Companies should be run like a family, but not necessarily by one, and certainly not one as dysfunctional as the Glazers and their Acolytes have been.
I wish the Coolmore mafia hadn't have given Fergie the ROG horse. Fergies greed wouldn't have happened. The Glazers probably wouldn't have happened.
You’d have still had some dicks claiming he was over the hill and needed replacing.
Re-write No. 1: Don’t take off from Munich in these fecking conditions.