Mail ~ JAAP STAM: Man United need to look at their recruitment after forking out £80m on Harry Maguire - Wes Brown was FAR quicker and better

[#07]

I can understand why we went for Maguire, even if the pricetag was absurd and he shouldn't be captain, but £45m for AWB on the back of one decent season for Palace was more of a head scratcher. We're always getting fleeced.

We get fleeced because the people doing our transfer business don't know how to identify value.

We seem to think expensive=quality. Like a person who will never buy toothpaste from poundland just because its front poundland. We could get the same quality for cheaper if we shopped in the right places. Man Utd wanna be Waitrose shoppers, nothing else.

 

[TheGame]

Can't have too many of them.

You can, it's a bit pathetic and based on a article from the Daily Fail.

 

[acnumber9]

Regardless of the first comment, Wes Brown being better is hardly a stick to beat someone with, he was very good.

It’s more a stick to beat United with. It’s a sign of how far we have fallen. Wes Brown was mostly back up.

 

[m1tch]

Regardless of the first comment, Wes Brown being better is hardly a stick to beat someone with, he was very good.

This was my immediate thought. Only had a back-up centre back role because of injuries and the Rio/Vidic partnership. Maguire has been massively underwhelming so far, and fee paid was typical of United, £20 million more than 12 months earlier and that was a £20 million mark up on real value to begin with, i.e. if we'd paid half what we did you'd not be surprised that he's on par with Lindelof for example.

 

[Marwood]

Rio wasn’t as imperious as he was at the beginning of his career with us. He grew into the leader role. Same with Terry who benefited having someone senior like Carvalho next to him. I fully believe that if Wes didn’t have the injuries he had he would have grown into that leader type.

I don't think his on pitch personality lent itself to that role.

He was much more like AWB is now.

 

[Adisa]

His point is you don't spend 80m on someone that isn't as good as Wes Brown.

 

[Stacks]

Wes Brown is 42 though. He's not the answer in my opinion.

Maguire is a very good player having a bad season. Controversial I know.

he's good.

I can see the logic in trying to get a British core to our team. British players don't tend to travel well. They rarely go to foreign leagues. So if you were able to assemble a really good core of British players you could build around that for the long term. In a similar way Bayern makes sure to hoover up all the best German players and they can integrate them into a long term project, knowing that they're unlikely to want to leave for Spain etc.

However, we just signed the wrong players. We say we want to be an attacking team. Well most attacking teams play a high line and compress the pitch. How can we expect our £80m centre back to do that with his pace in 1v1s? Any team playing a long ball over the top is going to be able to get at us when we commit because of his lack of recovery speed. We say we want to play the United way. Yet we buy a right back who's as dangerous offensively as Gary Neville at the Hawthorns in 2011.

Where was the thinking?

We just seem to pick up random 'good' players. There never seems to be any real plan about how to fit them all together.

Even the lads you mentioned that we picked up: Amad and Pellistri. Why did we buy both? You could make a case for picking up one of them. However, we ended up buying three right wingers in two summers only to play Greenwood there ahead of all of them. What was the thinking there? It felt like the club just reacted to criticism of not buying a right sided midfielder and just went on a splurge. There's no real sign that there was or is a plan that we're working towards to assemble a team that plays a certain style.

And we signed Sancho too so effectively a back to the back ups back up

 

[GMoore23]

Saying Wes Brown was quicker and better isn't much of a dig to be honest. If it weren't for injuries, Wes would've become one of the best cb's in the world and easily a 100m defender in todays market.

 

[KirkDuyt]

Ad Hominems are not something I usually resort to, but Jaap Stam is the worst sports trainer in the history of organized sports. It's of course easy to say in hindsight that Maguire has been underwhelming, but Jaap, mate, shush.

 

[Relevated]

Ad Hominems are not something I usually resort to, but Jaap Stam is the worst sports trainer in the history of organized sports. It's of course easy to say in hindsight that Maguire has been underwhelming, but Jaap, mate, shush.

Yes it literally makes no sense. So what if wes brown was better? It's not like he was an option or is still playing so the comparison is ridiculous.

 

[Oldyella]

I for one wad gutted when we let Wes go to sign Maguire

 

[devilish]

Stam and now Howson as well....the vultures are circling around Maguire. I think we'll soon have some news about the matter

 

[Sandikan]

What a strange article.
Using a player who left us about 15 years ago, and arguably only had 1 season as a nailed on regular?
What's Brown got to do with anything?

 

[Greck]

The opening in that headline literally translates to he isn't worth 80m. Also that you don't spend 80m on a CB that is worse than the backup CB of a team you're aspiring to. I get the feeling people know this too. The headline isn't worded in riddle. It's a commonly cited belief about our mega signings too.

 

[BuzzKillington]

People criticise Ole, but Johnny Evans was at least as good as Maguire and LvG let him go and replaced him with some absolute shite.

Maguire isn’t an awful defender, he’s not £80m worth of defender under any circumstances, but he’s perfectly fine. Just horribly out of form, and even when on good form, not top drawer

 

[TsuWave]

Maguire is awful

 

[elnorte]

Maguire is awful

 

[Stobzilla]

Young Wes Brown was a disaster. The number of silly mistakes he made in the early 00s. Him, Barthez, Blanc and Silvestre were like watching the keystone cops at times.

Directly after the injury yes, but in the early part of the 03/04 season he was starting to look fairly formidable next to Rio iirc. Then Rio got that band and he had to play next to Tweety, he started doing too much and it all went to pot for a while.

 

[Skills]

Woodward vetoed the transfer the year before and our fanbase kicked off about it.

When Ole came in with his vision of Brexit FC, he would've been crucified if he vetoed the manager again

 

[Alemar]

So from my POV we were trying to get an "english core" at united for some reason.

which is strange as Man Utd has the largest contingent of international supporters worldwide. Only several per cent of supporters are actually English .

 

[crossy1686]

Stam is only saying something United things already know. Also not fit to be captain or anywhere near capable of handling the scrutiny that goes with it.

We best hope we get some kind of tune out of him though otherwise he’ll be kicking around the place for the next 4 years until his contract runs down and goes to Newcastle like Jesse

 

[Greck]

which is strange as Man Utd has the largest contingent of international supporters worldwide. Only several per cent of supporters are actually English .

It's not that strange tbf. There are reasons for it including having a core culture in the dressing room, local relatability and players who won't cry for moves abroad for weather or whatever reason. Problem was it was implemented by total newbies. This was the same as when Liverpool went and got Andy Carroll. Fergie would retire before paying even 25m for Smalling or Jones and there we were treating every British prospect like a wonderkid. Our core culture is now questionable fitting, thoroughly mediocre footballers because we filtered by nationality and not the other way round.

 

[norm87cro]

Stam lived up to the price, Maguire has not.

I will just adress your quote since I have two more like yours. I am personally not comparing the two (giving the prior the respect he is entitled to in my intial comment) but I find his lack of understanding for Maguire suprising giving the starting simmilarities between the two (speed and the record CB transfer price tag).

 

[Adnan]

Maguire was a Ole signing and Ole wanted british. There were better CBs available around europe. Now we are stuck with a CB who cant play a high block, who has no recovery pace and is generally very average, but hes british so its all ok.

This

Ole was our DoF in the time he was at the club and even had his own personal scout (Simon Wells) to aid him. Wan Bissaka and Maguire were signings made on the say so of Simon Wells imo, who Ole trusted above all else due to their association, which started whilst Solskjaer was at Molde and Simon Wells was a scout in the Scandinavian region.

To have a successful plan when recruiting, everyone needs to pull in the same direction and that's something that hasn't happened at this club since Fergie.

And I don't even believe it's difficult to stick to a footballing blueprint, it's actually a very simple concept, but we've carried on allowing Managers post Fergie set the directive which is a big mistake, like we saw with Mourinho, who signed two CBs, but then wanted a 3rd one after his first two purchases didn't live up to his expectations. The club in such a scenario was correct to put a halt to his scatter gun approach to recruitment and were correct to veto his targets like Maguire, Boateng, Alderwereild etc according to reports

 

[arthurka]

Maguire was a Ole signing and Ole wanted british. There were better CBs available around europe. Now we are stuck with a CB who cant play a high block, who has no recovery pace and is generally very average, but hes british so its all ok.

To be fair we had better English at the club..

 

[Adnan]

Agree with everything you say. Especially the last part.

When Manchester City's owners decided they wanted to be the best club in the world, they looked at the then best club Barcelona and decided we're going to take their CEO, Sporting Director and Coach. One by one Soriano, Txiki and Pep landed at Wastelands. We've seen the results.

They always go for the best person for the job. Whereas we go for the person best suited to making sure the owners get their rent.

Even Murtough, who I hope succeeds, is learning on the job. Never been a Sporting Director before.

It crazy when you think about it. You'd never see Google put someone in charge of software development who had no IT background. You would never see Pfizer put someone in charge of drug development who had no pharmaceutical background. So why do you see Man Utd put people in charge of football without the required background? 'Best in class' to quote Red Nev.

Then we wonder how we've spent £1 billion since Fergie and done nothing. Garbage in, Garbage out. Its simple.

When Man City's owners decided they wanted to become the best club in the world in 2008, they put Gary Cook in charge, who was part of the previous regime at the club and he had no footballing back ground. He was previously working at Nike. He made plenty of gaffes, which included inducting City legend Uwe Rosler into the 'Manchester United Hall of fame' which didn't go down well with City fans. He also insulted the Mother of Nedum Onuoha via email when she was dying of Cancer.

But even though Cook made mistakes and was rightly ridiculed in some scenarios, he turned to his former friend and colleague at Nike, Brian Marwood for help and assistance in 2009. Marwood was a ex pro footballer with a solitary England cap, who had never worked in the environment he was walking into at City. He had feck all experience in such a setup apart from being a pro footballer and being friends with Gary Cook. And it was Brian Marwood who got the ball rolling for City and hence putting in place mechanisms and structures for people who would arrive several years later.

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Soriano resigned from Barcelona in 2008 after a falling out with Joan Laporta according to reports. He joined City in 2012, after the Catalan company he was chairman of went bust.

Txiki Begiristain joined City in 2012, and pre Guardiola, he loaded City with numerous duds. The below article will shed some light on that.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...man-city-txiki-begiristain-transfers-22778739

 

[Guapa]

He's not wrong.Maguire's sh*t.Never gonna be a star here.Get shot.Sorry.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Maguire is a top centre half. He’s just the type that needs a complementary player alongside him. That player is Varane. They’ve just not been fit at the same time. £80m now looks obscene. But he’s still a top 10-20 centre back. He was top 10 at Leicester.

Stam chirping up with an outdated Wes Brown reference is weird though.

 

[Tap]

Who the feck is Jaap Stam and what does he know.

He knows way more about defending and winning titles than Maguire ever has and will have.

 

[tentan]

I think todays Stam and Brown could do a better job than Maguire