Agreed. It was a opportunistic move that we made after Dortmund refused to budge on their €120m valuation for Sancho. We refused to pay that fee and rightly so, which brought forward the signing of Amad.
Manchester United name John Murtough as Football Director and Darren Fletcher as Technical Director
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
- Start date
The form of the front 3 would be fine if our back-line could hold a higher line off the ball. But they can't, hence our attackers have less pass options. It's actually a big flaw in our play and it hinders our transitions.
Yes ageed and to add to that, our midfield duo - Fred and Mctominay don't pass through the lines and hence our attackers don't get the space to work with.
However to harp on this point again, the same 3 performed much better in the previous season compared to the last with the same flaws in our tactical setup. You can't argue against Martial of 2020-21 was significantly poorer than 2019-20. Hence tactics is not everything and players and our transfers matter a lot too.
I agree the midfield also hinders us on the ball.
I also agree with your second point that the players have to take responsibility aswell, but a team who can't hold a higher back line against decent teams will blunt our attack and make the us not as effective when it comes to counter pressing against teams who can break quickly.
Bruno and Fred pass through the lines a lot. It’s McT who has very poor use of the ball if he’s not dribbling it. He should be upgraded if we can. He’d be a good squad option. It’s also harder to get these stats when you’re passing into an out of form or static forward line.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/tribun...ue-midfielders-with-most-progressive-passes-/
Is there anyone we are linked to that PSG don't want first?
What happend to Financial Fair play? How can PSG keep buying, make no massive sales and still avoid any sanctions.
Its a joke. Fifa are a joke.
What happend to Financial Fair play? How can PSG keep buying, make no massive sales and still avoid any sanctions.
Its a joke. Fifa are a joke.
FFP is dead
Expensive lawyers hired by City destroyed ffp.
@devilish good read that was.
Only thing I would say plan B and C was Dembele and Sarr however Dembele not wanting the leave to us made it difficult, maybe if we was a Juventus he would have came and Sarr was just way to expensive.
I don’t see the point in the back up buys though if we still end up with Sancho anyway. Amad’s path becomes even more difficult.
Only thing I would say plan B and C was Dembele and Sarr however Dembele not wanting the leave to us made it difficult, maybe if we was a Juventus he would have came and Sarr was just way to expensive.
I don’t see the point in the back up buys though if we still end up with Sancho anyway. Amad’s path becomes even more difficult.
Without a doubt, Martial was in way better form the season before. But it was also pretty clear, that we also benefitted a lot from teams not being aware of our dangerous counter attacks and how well we were equipped to very fast and direct vertical play. This season at latest (it more or less started at the end of the season before) opponents adapted and closed spaces. And rightly so seeing what we did to Leeds, Sociedad and Leipzig in the 2nd half of the first match.
Opponents will adapt to Sanchso as well. That is why so many here emphasize the need to not just expecting the match to be influenced by the players but also from the manager. New players alone are great, can provide moments and nick a goal here and there. But to consistently create chances we have to increase the tempo of our play. That's not something to be done by one individual player. At least not in a reliable way. There is a lot of talk about "balance in the attack". This only produces anything of note, if we are able to move the ball faster between both sides of the pitch.
I think, there might be a few people up for a rough awakening regarding Sanchos impact. He alone will not be able to deactive the "Be as static as possible"-button, we seem to activate for the team too often. And this static-ness(?) doesn't originate from missing quality (seeing other teams being able to do it) but from (at least partial) lack of mutual understanding between our players.
Good job for first signing if it was true there is no adds on included. That's 35m euro lower than what they asked last year.
Good start Murty
What a start! 
Negotiating for players is not in their job description.
It’s literally his fecking job to negotiate for the players
Ole's at the wheel!
Johnny Murtough does the deals
We got Sancho for less than they said
Now it's off to the next transfer thread
do do do do do do do do do do do
Johnny Murtough does the deals
We got Sancho for less than they said
Now it's off to the next transfer thread
do do do do do do do do do do do
That lies with Matt Judge.
very good!Judge reports to Murtough.
Murtough ain’t too old for this sh%t! Get in!
Last summer's target in the bag at a discount. Let's see if we're signing two more quality players. I think we will. Maybe the two of them can handle working on various deals concurrently
Woodward negotiated the finance of the deal with Dortmund CEO, reported in more than a few places.
It was reported in the past that one of the issues agents/clubs had was finding a point of contact at United to initiate player incomings/outgoings. Woodward and Judge were then put into positions which they weren't comfortable in which caused issues. Murtough has become the point of contact now and i'm anticipating a much smoother line of communication between Murtough, agents and DoF's like Michael Zorc.
That might be the case but when it comes down to the finances its woodward and judge who do the negotiations.
Both have backgrounds in financial world. Murtough is a data scientist.
Murtough is a coach too.
Judge does the negotiations but he answers to Murtough, which is well documented. It's Murtough's job to iron out any problems with his counter part, which was Michael Zorc when it came to Dortmund and the player's agent.
Woodward would naturally have a line of communication with Watzke, which is normal and what was reported.
Seen a fair few people post absolutely metric tons about him yet without ever mentioning the bolded part.
It would explain a great many things for me; a lot of things seem to make more sense now.
All you had to do was type his name into google to know that. I have also mentioned he that he modernised us when it came to creating a data science department when we never had one.
Could you link some articles where it states such? Sounds like there are quite a few.
The second sentence isn't even close to meaning he's a data scientist. An order/directive like that could just as easily come from an administrative/executive position.
Good start for Murtough/Fletcher. Sancho deal done and at a decent price too and before the pre-season started.
There's literally numerous articles in this thread. The link below from March 2020 gives some insight on the strategy Murtough was tasked with.
https://trainingground.guru/articles/murtough-leading-development-of-man-utd-data-science-strategy
https://www.unitedinfocus.com/news/who-is-john-murtough-manchester-uniteds-new-director-of-football/
From the article above "His recent work was focused on developing United’s data science strategy, which looked at everything from medical, recruitment and coaching".
The second sentence is referring to him being tasked with creating the data science department at the club because that's one of his specialities and he's long been considered to be a innovator in his field when it comes to modernising clubs when it comes to the data science aspect. Luis Campos also started as a technical assistant at Real Madrid in 2012.
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You have to say the first post Woodward signing is very positive. We signed one of the most highly-rated young players in the Bundesliga from the last few seasons, early in the window and under the reported asking price.
I don't know how much of that is down to Woodward leaving, but it makes a big change from our usual months of posturing before a last-minute scramble that normally ends with us overpaying.
I don't know how much of that is down to Woodward leaving, but it makes a big change from our usual months of posturing before a last-minute scramble that normally ends with us overpaying.
He hasn't left yet has he? End of the year I thought.
Think it says more about the new structure for acquisitions. Or at least I hope it does. A big deal done early in the window for a very good price.
Think it says more about the new structure for acquisitions. Or at least I hope it does. A big deal done early in the window for a very good price.
Matt judge is probably involved but it’s also mourtaghs responsibility. He replaces woody in the equation
I would be careful of giving them too much credit for anything that happens this summer. When the changes were announced, a lot of the articles stated this shouldn't really impact things this summer. In addition, I've seen Woodward's name pop up with regards to this transfer, so he likely had some sort of involvement one way or the other.
They can when Henerson is in goal.
A keeper can only help you by sweeping behind the back line if a higher defensive line is utilised. But a sweeper keeper isn't gonna help the CBs defend the channel in 1v1 scenarios in a higher defensive line.
Judge deals with player contracts once a deal has been agreed
Correct, from the Tifo video, Murtough is the main point of call, who negotiates the deal.
Judge deals with player contracts once a deal has been agreed and Woodward/Joel deals with the main finances, i.e: the transfer fee.
And yet they comfortably sat 10-15 yards higher up the pitch once Henderson got a run of fixtures behind them, both our defensive record and overall form was considerably better and even Lindelof looked ok most of the time.
Sticking with the correct goalkeeper will make a bigger difference to the team than buying a new centre back.
Good post. The “Fred can’t pass” meme is becoming the 2021 version of the 2010 “Carrick only passes backwards”. Genuinely astonishing that anyone can watch all our games and come out with stuff like that.
McT is definitely an issue when it comes to passing. On good days it’s fine but those good days are rare enough. In his defence, the last good day was our most recent fixture. And he’s young enough to keep on building on that.
I think the majority of peoples football opinions traditionally have come from "I heard at the pub..." and over the past few years that has moved into "I saw on Twitter/Insta/Facebook...".
The concern with this is that at least when it was "I heard at the pub..." people still watched the games - albeit generally biased one way or another, this has now been replaced with the social media crowd who can back up what they think with a 5 second video which gets shared thousands of times and one simple mistake which previously would have been forgotten about within 10 minutes, now overshadows an entire match or even a sequence of matches.
Maguire has been a major victim of that since he joined the club and certain Fred has too, there were spells last season where he was consistently good for 5/6 matches on the bounce and yet all you'd see online was a stupid pass that went out of play and 95% of the internet would seem to think he was useless because of it.
As for McTominay, agree on his use of the ball, at times it is a concern however the overall growth in his game has far exceeded my expectations of him so I'm hopeful he can continue honing his game because he's already a much more important player for us than I ever thought he would become.