Luckhurst: United prepared to move for a holding midfielder in January

Lindeloff reads the game well.
The pass he made to Bruno for his goal against Leeds was Pogba like.
He can defend. His one weakness is heading. Varane is far superior.
We have Bailly as cover for CB and Lindeloff can be too.

Yet if we do not make a specialist CDM signing today, the Ronaldo signing looks exactly what I thought at first.
A Glazers revenue generating exercise.


Fred is average.
McT is a box to box player
Matic is done.

The Southampton and Wolves match showed our lack of depth in the department.
Not that he'll score 20+ league goals at least?
 
We will face many games like Wolves where our midfield will be out fought. Not sure how the balance of the team would be when we play Ronaldo. We have midfielders with big weakness. Fred is erratic with many loose touches, Mctominay doesn't move to create passing option, Pogba is a defensive liability and Matic is just not mobile at all.

Pogba in 2 should work at least in home games but in away games with all fans back in the stadium don't think it will work.
 
Not really sure why we’re waiting. Maybe we can’t afford it, maybe the right target isn’t available but surely we just need a body in there at this point. I’d be ok with us recalling Garner tbh.
 
To the Jan transfer window thread!.

We may have 6 options but they are mostly terrible. Oh well, we will just have to outscore everyone.

EDIT. Yeah where are the 6?. Fred, Mctom, Donny, Matic, and Pogba?
McFred, Matic, Pogba, Jones, Lindelof
 
VDB played in the double pivot against Instambul Basaksehir in the UCL, Leicester and Wolves in the PL, and Watford in the FA Cup. In the first 3 he played with Matic, and against Watford it was with Scott. Also, he played more deep for Ajax a lot of times, especially after De Jong's departure. He is an option.

Also, we signed 3 world class players and i think that counts as the best windows of the top 4 clubs. Let's see: Liverpool only brought Konate but failed to replace Wjinaldum and add more depth to their attack.

Chelsea apparently won't bring Saul anymore and Kounde is looking unlikely each minute, so they only really brought Lukaku. It's a good sign, but they are one injury away from having to play Werner as the striker. Also, not much depth behind Kante-Jorginho-Kovacic. Also, they have 4 CB, and play with 3 at the back, so lack of depth, that's why they wanted Kounde.

City brought 100m Grealish but then it was failure after failure. With Kane, Ronaldo... They lost Aguero and replaced him with nobody. I know Pep likes to play with a false 9, but it helps when you have a proper striker as an option.

Also, Leicester and Tottenham had a good window. They've kept their best players, and brought some reinforcements.

So, nobody has had a perfect window and addressed every hole they needed. I think we came closer with 3 world class players. We should challenge for the title, there are no guarantee, but we should be in the conversation by the end of the season.
 
Luckhurst among many others now stating that our business is done.




Disappointing, still think we need someone in there with legs who can properly beat the press. McFred are both made better by having the other there but don’t impress on their own, and that means taking something out elsewhere (and we will already be making system adaptations/accommodations for Ronaldo who won’t press much). A young Matic would have been great sadly.

I would mind a bit of Saul’s “loan with conditional requirement to buy” deal I read they were requesting from Chelsea.

signing Ronaldo is an interesting one because I think it somewhat changes the timeline. He along with Messi is the ultimate “win now” guy, at his age can’t be part of a long term project. I think especially had we won a trophy in the last two years (we essentially left two europa leagues on the table), or if we win one this year, people would be happy enough seeing Ole’s project as a work in progress with obvious improvement. Now there are more expectations. The right midfielder would add more than his individual value to the team, he would unlock a lot for us.
 
I am a bit disappointed that we could not plug such an obvious hole in the team. We knew we needed one for so long.
We at least needed a stop gap option who is better than current Matic as backup to McFred.
 
Maybe we were going for a CDM but Ronaldo required a quick change of plans?
 
To the Jan transfer window thread!.

We may have 6 options but they are mostly terrible. Oh well, we will just have to outscore everyone.

EDIT. Yeah where are the 6?. Fred, Mctom, Donny, Matic, and Pogba?
Bruno played in the double pivot in the second half of his United debut (against Wolves). Maybe he's one of the options.
 
Maybe we were going for a CDM but Ronaldo required a quick change of plans?

Still doesn't explain why we weren't even in for Saul on loan just to make up the numbers. One injury to McTominay and we're stuck starting Pogba + Fred in a double pivot. Matic is too old, VdB isn't trusted there. So really it's 3 players for two positions and one (Pogba) doesn't even want to play there.
 
Not a double pivot DM
He played as a CM for Ajax loads - he's not a pure 10 and won't cut it there for us but it's not a long shot to think he'd offer more than Matic. We don't really play a DM, we just have 2 quite limited CMs, both of whom are better as b2bs and don't have the discipline to hold (as Fred was at Shakthar).
 
Who is Luckhurst saying the 6 options are?

Fred McTominay Matic Pogba VDB and Garner?

There's two valid options there and one of them is Fred.


The real reason we had no plans to sign a CDM is the squad is full, because we give new contracts out like candy and give Lingard and Jones all the cuddles they need to convince them to not push for moves.
Yeah the squad is too bloated at this point. And we seem to be struggling to move any of the deadwood.
 
I hope not signing a DM doesn’t come back to bite us on the arse. If we are going to wait until next year then we better be going after the best one on the market.
 
State of this forum when we sign Sancho (£73m), Raphael Varane (£41m) and CRISTIANO RONADLO (£12m + £485K p/w) and STILL people are crying because we haven't bought even more players!

It's no wonder we're seen as entitled by other clubs/fans!

It takes time to build a proper squad. We wasted a decade between roughly 2008 and 2018, either doing not much at all or throwing money at the wrong players.

You can't undo all of those bad decisions and fix all of those problems in just a couple of Summer windows.

We aren't playing FIFA. These transfers involve real humans, with real emotions, and real money!
 
Yeah the squad is too bloated at this point. And we seem to be struggling to move any of the deadwood.

That's what happens with a combination of handing out trash contracts and a manager who's too scared to sell anybody. Now we have 1 billion attackers for 3 positions but 3 midfielders for 3 positions
 
State of this forum when we sign Sancho (£73m), Raphael Varane (£41m) and CRISTIANO RONADLO (£12m + £485K p/w) and STILL people are crying because we haven't bought even more players!

It's no wonder we're seen as entitled by other clubs/fans!

It takes time to build a proper squad. We wasted a decade between roughly 2008 and 2018, either doing not much at all or throwing money at the wrong players.

You can't undo all of those bad decisions and fix all of those problems in just a couple of Summer windows.

We aren't playing FIFA. These transfers involve real humans, with real emotions, and real money!
Too many people don't understand this
 
Let's be honest, after signing Ronaldo, this midfield addition would always be more hopeful than anything. We signed 3 world class players, and I can't say I'm not happy with this window.

We might have gone for a midfielder if we had raised funds through selling some of our fringe players, but we seem to be shit at that. Let's hope we learn that as a lesson on what happens when we hand out massive wages to average players.

Ole will have to alter his tactics to accomodate DVB, or change formations to suit what we have. I bet 99% of the managers in football would love to have this squad.
 
Luckhurst among many others now stating that our business is done.




Next year there will be a push for Haaland. Then they will claim something else when another window ends and some other position of significance gets ignored. Why not for once go all in and hand the manager a squad with no gaping holes in it?

Having options doesn't mean having quality. We had James, Martial, Greenwood etc as wide options but still decided to get Sancho so this "options" bs is something I won't buy.
 
all the money spent this year is left over from last year. Ronaldo pays for himself.

Still, no DM.
 
State of this forum when we sign Sancho (£73m), Raphael Varane (£41m) and CRISTIANO RONADLO (£12m + £485K p/w) and STILL people are crying because we haven't bought even more players!

It's no wonder we're seen as entitled by other clubs/fans!

It takes time to build a proper squad. We wasted a decade between roughly 2008 and 2018, either doing not much at all or throwing money at the wrong players.

You can't undo all of those bad decisions and fix all of those problems in just a couple of Summer windows.

We aren't playing FIFA. These transfers involve real humans, with real emotions, and real money!
Did you watch the Wolves game? We clearly need a DM.
 
Even with this midfield we were second last year. Maybe this new additions will lift us in the table and we'll be in the mix for the title. Especially if Ronaldo will score like 20 goals or more.
Of course getting a mid would be near perfect window but it's great even without that. In any case Ole should mix it up and use VDB ffs.
No CDM doesn't necessarily mean no title and neither a CDM means a title.
I get it we need that CDM but it seems like it's the new reason to cry about.

To repeat myself it's been a truly great window.
 
We signed 3 world class players, and I can't say I'm not happy with this window.
And yet some people actually seem to be still wanting or expecting more. It's crazy. Not sure I can remember a transfer window this good. Seriously. A top young wide attacking player, a WC CB who even in his first game looked class and CR7. Seriously top work by our recruiting team.
 
It's possible to sign more than 3 players in a transfer window or did you not realise this?

The reason we can't is because we're still throwing money at the wrong players i.e. the 6 or 7 players in our 25 man squad who offer us nothing either because they physically can't or, in VdB's case, because Ole hates them.

It's possible to sign loads of players if your criteria is basically 'anybody who is available'

I like to think the club are a little more strategic in their choice of target than this.

Personally, I doubt we win the league this year even with Saul/Neves/Camavinga....so let's identify proper targets, see what can be achieved with what we have and then go again next season from a position of strength and planning
 
I hope not signing a DM doesn’t come back to bite us on the arse. If we are going to wait until next year then we better be going after the best one on the market.
I am fairly certain it will

By next summer pogba will probably have left as well leaving us even weaker from that department. I don't really believe we will ever get to a stage where we have plugged all the gaps in the squad (to an accepatable level) at the pace we operate. Ultimately I think its down to the glazers not really caring about competing for trophies as long as we are in the champions league

We also often end up conflating commercial matters with football ones which is why the ronaldo signing was such a no brainer for the club, even if it meant us missing out on a midfielder
 
We need a GK, two CMs, a backup RB, a CF who isn't in his mid-30s....not going to happen all at once though is it?

Going into this window, we also needed a CB and a RW, sorted both of those positions, now it requires patience.
Yeah but we really need a DM.
 
Let's hope McTomminay will be available till the end of season after his comeback. The last game showed us just how crucial he is to our midfield. The only midfielder we have that's no so shit at controlling the ball and have legs to actually press and defend. VDB is still an unknown quality because Ole played Dalot instead of him :lol: .
 
We do but with our tactical setup I think even the best DM on planet earth will be exposed.
Ole just needs to tell Bruno he’s not a striker. The 4-2-4 on Sunday was ridiculous & we were extremely lucky getting all 3 points. In all honestly we deserved to lose.