Kroos "the deal was all but done"

Wednesday at Stoke

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This is sad when you consider that the team was not far from challenging Chelsea despite a depressing start in LvG's first season if Carrick had stayed healthy in midfield. Then he compounded the problem by spending on a has been Schweinsteiger and a never been Schneiderlin.
 

DoomSlayer

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I think loads of people thought it was all fake news when Moyes said 'lots of big players want to sign for me'. This is the first real confirmation that the story was true.
It shows how stupid is to just change managers with no plan whatsoever.

If we had a director of football and a proper structure with long-term plan, these kind of failures would not happen on a regular basis, as it has been the case with our club.
 
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flappyjay

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I am guessing we had Shaw, Ander and Kroos lined up. That would have been a brilliant summer. Kroos, Ander and Carrick would have been a good midfield
 

Westerkerk

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Depressing, but deep down we all know that he would have gone to garbage here - for a high profile player on what would have been an excessive wage and looking to make an impact - it was possibly the worst time to join us.
 

devilish

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We got matey Bastian and blind instead just as Moyes brought matey fellaini and Mou brought matey Matic. That what happens when you give full control to the manager.
 

FrankDrebin

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To then bring in mediocre player like Schneiderlin and a past it Schweinsteiger in the following summer just compounds the bloody odd decisions LVG made.
 

PoTMS

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When a player like him is available, we should overrule the manager and sign him. This is where a transfer committee comes into handy. He couldn't have been worse than any of the dross we already had and then later signed under Van Gaal.
 

RUCK4444

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What a feckin' clown Van Gaal was to turn Kroos down, he was one of the best midfielders in world football at the time.

I'm not saying it would have changed everything but having one world class player in our midfield over the past years would have made a big difference imo.
 

Andersonson

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We got matey Bastian and blind instead just as Moyes brought matey fellaini and Mou brought matey Matic. That what happens when you give full control to the manager.
Or, it works very well if its the right manager.
Klopp, Pep or any other great manager wouldnt join a club where they didnt have a say in transfers.
 

devilish

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Or, it works very well if its the right manager.
Klopp, Pep or any other great manager wouldnt join a club where they didnt have a say in transfers.
Dortnund, Liverpool and City have a DOF
 

James Peril

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To then bring in mediocre player like Schneiderlin and a past it Schweinsteiger in the following summer just compounds the bloody odd decisions LVG made.
It's 2020 now, and so is the hindsight in the above post. I fully agree as it turned out, but people were generally very excited to sign Schneiderlin at the time. The same goes for Schweinsteiger, a true legend of the game - and then not so finished as he turned out to be. I remember some people being negative and stating the same, but 99% on here were looking forward to him joining the team. Of course, I am not going to argue on the fact that Toni Kroos should have been signed no matter what else we had lined up! Schweinsteiger above all let us down mostly by turning up unfit and never dedicating himself to become the best version om himself again - which is entirely different from just losing a yard of pace. Bastian was too fat.
 

Samid

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As bad as it seems in hindsight, the reality is that he wasn't horny enough at the time.
 

romufc

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I don't know why fans get so upset about this, these sort of stories always come out when the team is not doing well.

So if a contract was sorted, surely it is Ed and his team who do that not Moyes. There is always 2 sides to a story. Moyes was sacked well before the transfer window opened.
 

Henrik Larsson

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Confirms earlier reports, now Kroos was the type of quality player we could've really benefitted from.

If we're talking about missed opportunities though, for me it gets even more bizarre if you realize that first we had a Dutch manager. He didn't bring in guys like Wijnaldum or De Vrij in despite just having worked with them very sucessfully, and he completely failed to recognize Van Dijk's talent, two of them ending up being very succesful for Liverpool out of all clubs. Instead he brings in guys like Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger, Memphis.

Then we have a Portugese manager but we somehow don't get a truly unique talent like Bernardo Silva who goes to our bitter rivals. Neither do we get Cristiano Ronaldo back despite the Mendes connection and his history at this club, for some reason however we do get Lukaku and fecking Lindelöf.

Now we have a Norwegian manager but of course we didn't get Haaland...
 

Niall

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Confirms earlier reports, now Kroos was the type of quality player we could've really benefitted from.

If we're talking about missed opportunities though, for me it gets even more bizarre if you realize that first we had a Dutch manager. He didn't bring in guys like Wijnaldum or De Vrij in despite just having worked with them very sucessfully, and he completely failed to recognize Van Dijk's talent, two of them ending up being very succesful for Liverpool out of all clubs. Instead he brings in guys like Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger, Memphis.

Then we have a Portugese manager but we somehow don't get a truly unique talent like Bernardo Silva who goes to our bitter rivals. Neither do we get Cristiano Ronaldo back despite the Mendes connection and his history at this club, for some reason however we do get Lukaku and fecking Lindelöf.

Now we have a Norwegian manager but of course we didn't get Haaland...
When you describe it all like that, you just have to :lol: Sums up our shambolic transfer strategy quite well.
 

Robbie Boy

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He's regressed now but he hit his prime years at Real and we really could have done with a midfielder of his ilk.
 

Champagne Football

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Giving Van Gaal an open checkbook was like giving matches to a child. The man was so far out of touch with the modern club game, that you'd swear you were watching archived footage of a club football game from North Korea from the 1950's.
 

RoyH1

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Exactly

Maybe we can do some Pogba/Kroos deal in the summer.
Kroos seems like a guy very set in his ways and he has hinted that he might retire when his deal with Madrid is done. Not saying it cannot happen, but I just think it'd be hard for him to leave the lifestyle he has with his family in Madrid at age 30.
 

Massive Spanner

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Exactly

Maybe we can do some Pogba/Kroos deal in the summer.
Kroos isn't the player he was a few years ago. I don't think we should be signing regressing 30+ year old players anymore. Other than Ibra it's been a bit of a disaster for us.
 

VeevaVee

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But LVG was hard done by and it was all the upper management making it impossible for him.

The guy's a moron.
 

mu4c_20le

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This report actually vindicates Moyes more than it damns Van Gaal. There is nothing wrong with a new manager wanting to bring in his own players, maybe he thought he was too similar to Carrick, and instead bought a more defensive minded one, as well as an attacking one.

Moyes had some sort of vision, he just wasn't able to build it thanks to a shambolic first post SAF transfer window, where Woody was laughed around Europe without Fergie's name to back him up. Had we given him some more time and another proper summer window, then sack him if the wasn't getting the results, Klopp would've been available.
 

ash_86

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Shows how chopping and changing manager can be so counter productive. It's hard to define where we draw the line but we cannot keep changing policy every year.
 

JPRouve

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Confirms earlier reports, now Kroos was the type of quality player we could've really benefitted from.

If we're talking about missed opportunities though, for me it gets even more bizarre if you realize that first we had a Dutch manager. He didn't bring in guys like Wijnaldum or De Vrij in despite just having worked with them very sucessfully, and he completely failed to recognize Van Dijk's talent, two of them ending up being very succesful for Liverpool out of all clubs. Instead he brings in guys like Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger, Memphis.

Then we have a Portugese manager but we somehow don't get a truly unique talent like Bernardo Silva who goes to our bitter rivals. Neither do we get Cristiano Ronaldo back despite the Mendes connection and his history at this club, for some reason however we do get Lukaku and fecking Lindelöf.

Now we have a Norwegian manager but of course we didn't get Haaland...
It's worth remembering that Kroos "worked" with Van Gaal at Bayern and if I remember correctly he wasn't a fan of the player. So the initial rumor made total sense at the time and Van Gaal has form for that, he allegedly was totally against Bayern signing Neuer.
 

VeevaVee

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Yeah life is that straight forward and simple. Grow up
What a weird retort. Did that personally affect you? Are you LVG?

The guy poopooed an actual good signing and by all accounts ruined the atmosphere at United behind the scenes that SAF took so long to build, plus talked constant shit while was here and even more once he left. He's an idiot.
 

JPRouve

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Shows how chopping and changing manager can be so counter productive. It's hard to define where we draw the line but we cannot keep changing policy every year.
The problem isn't chopping and changing manager but this weird confusion that the manager is the club when he is simply an employee that will rarely be at the club for the entire length of most players contracts. Most players at top clubs sign for 5 years while managers rarely spend more than 3 years, it makes no sense to put the manager above the playing staff. That's why unless if you have a manager like SAF, transfers should be the clubs decision and the manager do with what he is given, he can have some input but that's only advisory.
 

VeevaVee

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Some people thought he was laying the foundations :houllier:
They're as thick as him. There's still people that rate his defensive record despite it only happening because we passed the ball around on the half way line for 90 mins.
 

Andersonson

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Dortnund, Liverpool and City have a DOF
Liverpool have a sporting director,in Edwards.

Tixi and Pep are like a manager and assistant in terms of the way they work. No players there gets signed without pep wanting it too.

The term 'DOF' doesnt really say much. What each 'DOF' do vary alot from club to club. The structure in Dortmund is way off the one Man City have.
 

Leftback99

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LVG set us back years with his transfer decisions at a time when we had a far bigger financial advantage than we do now.