Manchester United name John Murtough as Football Director and Darren Fletcher as Technical Director

Matt851

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You don’t know this at all.
I basically do, it's extremely unlikely any other club was in for him without there being any stories in the media. And the other obvious suitors such as Liverpool just don't seem to have the money or need for him
 

Lentwood

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The sensible posters have said for some time that we should be much more aware of players' contract situation before targeting them - and this is a prime example of us doing that to get a very good player for a discounted price.

I'd say the management team have done a great job here and it's another indication that we're wising up as a club post-Woodward
 

Berbasbullet

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If we can secure Onana soon then it's been a cracking start to the window.

Then hopefully start moving onto a striker quite quickly and I imagine that will be it for us this summer.
 

tomaldinho1

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I think I'm one of the only people who doesn't hate these two

I don't think we have enough information to know if they're doing a good job or not yet

but they've helped us secure ETH, got him most of his targets.. I honestly think if Woody was in charge ETH would have said no

doesn't seem like a bad start tbh, and lets not forget they are still working under the Glazers which must be a nightmare
You're just being sensible. Woodward was just an extension of the Glazers, he basically said yes or no to spending and his latter role when he stepped away from trying to be all matey with the players was pretty standard although there's a strong argument that says the damage was done and his reputation was damaging for the club. Murtough actually has a football background (ironic given the posters who cry about not having 'football people' in the DoF role) and what I like about his background is his expertise is in player development so it will be interesting to keep an eye on youth signings under his watch.

This is really the first window I think we can assess Murtough + team in depth for the first team though, last window really was appeasing a new manager coming in and getting him his priority targets which he did. This season there seems to be more budget constraint and so it will be harder to sign players, we seem to have done well in my opinion to get Mount over the line and we can only really assess things after the window but so far it's fair to say when he's given targets he's getting them done (not counting the ridiculous FdJ link which was never real and the player never wanted to come).
 

Rozay

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It seems that no matter how much footy some watch, their opinion on a player is simply ‘I like who Ten Hag likes’. Like robots. I remember the conversations on Mason Mount on here over the years, especially when some dared to mention him alongside Bruno.

My opinion may not turn out to be the correct one with Mount, but still, at least have one of your own. If that is that Mount is a great player then fine, but the trend has swung a lot of late. Perhaps naturally I guess.
 

Kag

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I basically do, it's extremely unlikely any other club was in for him without there being any stories in the media. And the other obvious suitors such as Liverpool just don't seem to have the money or need for him
Swathes of media reports have indicated that Mount’s contractual situation reared plenty of heads at a whole host of clubs, including United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Bayern. Not to mention Chelsea clearly wanted to keep him. He wants to play for United and has by all accounts made that very apparent. But yes, let’s pretend that we’re fools for buying a player that wasn’t wanted by anyone at all.
 

El Jefe

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Btw anyone know what murtough was doing in Turin airport?
Didn't he go to meet Madame Rabiot. Also flew to Barcelona with Richie to have a couple of pints.

Strong vibes of Woodward leaving the tour to conduct urgent transfer business that never materialised.
 

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It seems that no matter how much footy some watch, their opinion on a player is simply ‘I like who Ten Hag likes’. Like robots. I remember the conversations on Mason Mount on here over the years, especially when some dared to mention him alongside Bruno.

My opinion may not turn out to be the correct one with Mount, but still, at least have one of your own. If that is that Mount is a great player then fine, but the trend has swung a lot of late. Perhaps naturally I guess.

Or maybe few have their opinion but are also open to accepting that they might be wrong about the player considering how many good managers wanted to sign the player.
 

Cassidy

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Has he managed to sell anyone for a decent fee yet? Or are we going to be loaning Telles and Baily out again...
 

Matt851

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Swathes of media reports have indicated that Mount’s contractual situation reared plenty of heads at a whole host of clubs, including United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Bayern. Not to mention Chelsea clearly wanted to keep him. He wants to play for United and has by all accounts made that very apparent. But yes, let’s pretend that we’re fools for buying a player that wasn’t wanted by anyone at all.
But no media reports suggested anyone other than us and maybe bayern had any sort of concrete interest and the bayern reports made it clear they wouldn't go near the fee we were offering. It does seem we were mounts preference but that may have had something to do with the enormous salary we offered that I have a hard time believing anyone would match
 

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It seems that no matter how much footy some watch, their opinion on a player is simply ‘I like who Ten Hag likes’. Like robots. I remember the conversations on Mason Mount on here over the years, especially when some dared to mention him alongside Bruno.

My opinion may not turn out to be the correct one with Mount, but still, at least have one of your own. If that is that Mount is a great player then fine, but the trend has swung a lot of late. Perhaps naturally I guess.
So true :lol:
 

roonster09

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But no media reports suggested anyone other than us and maybe bayern had any sort of concrete interest and the bayern reports made it clear they wouldn't go near the fee we were offering. It does seem we were mounts preference but that may have had something to do with the enormous salary we offered that I have a hard time believing anyone would match
There was lot of reports that Arsenal and Liverpool were interested in him, even that Mount was one of the 3 players identified by Arsenal to strengthen their team. This wasn't some bs report by Sun, it was reported by Ornstein and it was much before ManUtd were linked with Mount.
 

Rightnr

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Imagine the reaction on here if we spent £105M on Rice and £65M on fecking Havertz.
So Murtough is not shit because Edu is a Brazilian Woodward? Great arguments there. Absolute straw man central.

At least with Rice, he has always had the 100m price tag (for anyone not living in la-la land) and he plays in a position he'd be great for us in the big games, especially given the hidings we took last season.

I'd rank the recent midfield signings based on both price and profile:

Caicedo
Rice
Mount

I don't get the obsession with attacking people who don't rate a signing who has no clear role in the squad based on what we've seen so far and hasn't really shown a level that can make us a genuine challenger.
 

Zed is not dead

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You need a buyer first
If he was a proper DOF, like the ones at City or Chelsea, he would have created shell companies with ties to sovereign funds and manage to magically sell everyone we don’t want.

But we’re total shambles, jobs for the boys, he’s an incompetent yes man, incapable of cooking the books.
And don’t get me started on Fletcher. I actually don’t know what his job is but I’m pretty sure he’s shite, because why not.

Am I doing it right?
 

Andy_Cole

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It seems that no matter how much footy some watch, their opinion on a player is simply ‘I like who Ten Hag likes’. Like robots. I remember the conversations on Mason Mount on here over the years, especially when some dared to mention him alongside Bruno.

My opinion may not turn out to be the correct one with Mount, but still, at least have one of your own. If that is that Mount is a great player then fine, but the trend has swung a lot of late. Perhaps naturally I guess.
True but it’s also giving Hag the correct cogs in the system. Hag is a systems manager, so players who may appear bang average could be perfect for Hag.
 

AltiUn

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I basically do, it's extremely unlikely any other club was in for him without there being any stories in the media. And the other obvious suitors such as Liverpool just don't seem to have the money or need for him
Liverpool wanted him but it's pretty widely reported he preferred United.
 

Skills

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i don't believe all this FFP noise from OT, (if this is to believed and maybe its just DM BS) apparently our crack negotiating team have managed to give Mount triple his Chelsea wages. I like the player, but come on.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...alary-Man-United-deal-worth-250-000-week.html
I think overestimate how much room for negotiation there actually is with fees or wages.

The reason mount is leaving Chelsea in the first place is that they couldn't agree on a wage. So that number was always going to be fairly high.
 

Redstain

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This is the caf where posters will pretend like they can't see very obvious things, just to belittle others.

I personally like Mount and I'm happy we went for him but there's clearly a pattern of EtH going for players he's familiar with which is exactly what got us poor signings under Jose. Its so obvious too as he's done the same at previous clubs.

At least this season we are being linked with players from a wider net than players EtH has managed or managed against. I guess you could say Onana falls into that category but he's probably the choice target due to price as Costa and Maignan will be really expensive.

After Weghorst, he lost my confidence, he was already on extremely shaky ground with Antony. I love EtH as a coach but we really need to not give our managers too much power in squad building, as mentioned that's how Jose and Ole built unreliable squads.
Your highlighting a point for me that posters are oblivious too and it's the structure that always fails when the manager dictates too much of the transfer activity. That's why the squad is made up of signings from the eras of the previous failed managers hence there's been no cohesion as opposed to signings that can definitively be assessed as the club's internal decisions.

I read somewhere that Klopp was convinced by the hierarchy at Liverpool to sign Salah for example. That for me is a business with departments that are doing their jobs. It's too much responsibility for the manager to do what SAF did conveying multiple responsibilities in player acquisition while planning the direction of the coaching / first team requirements. It doesn't matter if the signings all turn out decent, the club should only sign players in consideration to the direction and philosophy that the hierarchy set.

This is why when new managers go to other clubs they don't have to always necessarily rip the first 11 to shreds in order to remain competitive but at United the minimum requirement for every manager is 36 months to bring in the players they want. That model of operation is not sustainable in the long run at all.
 

Rozay

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Or maybe few have their opinion but are also open to accepting that they might be wrong about the player considering how many good managers wanted to sign the player.
How can you be wrong about your opinion? As in, you don’t actually know what your opinion is.

If you think a player isn’t that good, that that is what you think. You can’t be mistaken in that you don’t actually know what you think. If what you think is in contrast to what a manager thinks, then by all means, be open to being proven wrong. Mount has not played a single game for us, so if you, having watched Mount for years, don’t think he is that good - he clearly hasn’t proven you wrong yet. He might do, but he hasn’t. So basically, you simply don’t know what it is that you think of a player.
 

Rozay

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True but it’s also giving Hag the correct cogs in the system. Hag is a systems manager, so players who may appear bang average could be perfect for Hag.
That may well be true, and we are all open to being proven wrong on a player. But Ten Hag wanting to sign a player is not being proven wrong. After all, Thomas Tuchel, Frank Lampard clearly thought Mount was a great player at the time that you didn’t, and they are professionals, yet you held a different opinion. Nobody should ever form an independent view of a footballer because by default, professional coaches clearly rate them highly.

And I repeat, Ten Hag brought Wout Weghorst to Manchester United, which is unforgivable under any circumstances.
 

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Didn't he go to meet Madame Rabiot. Also flew to Barcelona with Richie to have a couple of pints.

Strong vibes of Woodward leaving the tour to conduct urgent transfer business that never materialised.
I thought that video was from yesterday? Maybe I’m wrong about that
 

roonster09

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How can you be wrong about your opinion? As in, you don’t actually know what your opinion is.

If you think a player isn’t that good, that that is what you think. You can’t be mistaken in that you don’t actually know what you think. If what you think is in contrast to what a manager thinks, then by all means, be open to being proven wrong. Mount has not played a single game for us, so if you, having watched Mount for years, don’t think he is that good - he clearly hasn’t proven you wrong yet. He might do, but he hasn’t. So basically, you simply don’t know what it is that you think of a player.
You can be wrong about a player, i mean it's not hard. Just that few accept they were wrong and few will be stubborn and keep changing the goal posts for their e-ego.

Just look at Mount thread, people come up with crap like sideways merchant who barely creates anything when he is among the top players in chance creation.

There are many who comes up with posts that they watched player for years or many games, which more often than not is just crap. They would have watched few times without much interest on said player. So it's a lazy opinion on the first place, Then when you are linked with the same player, you start deeper analysis by watching the analysis videos, individual performance videos, relevant stats to see what they bring to the team.
 

Grande

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It seems that no matter how much footy some watch, their opinion on a player is simply ‘I like who Ten Hag likes’. Like robots. I remember the conversations on Mason Mount on here over the years, especially when some dared to mention him alongside Bruno.

My opinion may not turn out to be the correct one with Mount, but still, at least have one of your own. If that is that Mount is a great player then fine, but the trend has swung a lot of late. Perhaps naturally I guess.
Fair point. We may not know whom of hus will seem tight or wrong in hindsight, but we have different perspectives which has a value in itself. My view on Mount has been that he has seemed like a smart and solid player, without star qualities, but very useful to as different and sensible managers as Lampard, Tuchel, Southgate, Pochettino and Ten Hag. So I accept that he is a useful and quite versatile player, who won’t have a Bruno-esque impact, but who used well may be an important part of a very good team.
You're just being sensible. Woodward was just an extension of the Glazers, he basically said yes or no to spending and his latter role when he stepped away from trying to be all matey with the players was pretty standard although there's a strong argument that says the damage was done and his reputation was damaging for the club. Murtough actually has a football background (ironic given the posters who cry about not having 'football people' in the DoF role) and what I like about his background is his expertise is in player development so it will be interesting to keep an eye on youth signings under his watch.

This is really the first window I think we can assess Murtough + team in depth for the first team though, last window really was appeasing a new manager coming in and getting him his priority targets which he did. This season there seems to be more budget constraint and so it will be harder to sign players, we seem to have done well in my opinion to get Mount over the line and we can only really assess things after the window but so far it's fair to say when he's given targets he's getting them done (not counting the ridiculous FdJ link which was never real and the player never wanted to come).
Makes sense to me. To me I’m less affected by the possibility that we could have negotiated better given the contract situation and the player’s desire to come to us, it weighs more with me that we have aquired an young England regular from a rival for 55m+, and that he wanted to leave his boyhood club to come to us.
 

Rozay

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You can be wrong about a player, i mean it's not hard. Just that few accept they were wrong and few will be stubborn and keep changing the goal posts for their e-ego.

Just look at Mount thread, people come up with crap like sideways merchant who barely creates anything when he is among the top players in chance creation.

There are many who comes up with posts that they watched player for years or many games, which more often than not is just crap. They would have watched few times without much interest on said player. So it's a lazy opinion on the first place, Then when you are linked with the same player, you start deeper analysis by watching the analysis videos, individual performance videos, relevant stats to see what they bring to the team.
Anyone can be wrong about a player. It should take more than your team being linked to him to be proven so though.

And it doesn’t matter how much you have watched a player. Fans would do well to remember that they are not required to be scouts, data analysts and all the rest. You watch plenty of football, and even without any sort of deep dive, there are players you rate just as much as there are players you don’t- and you don’t need to be a scout to be entitled to feel how you feel about a player you have watched. And everyone has watched enough Chelsea and England games, it’s not as passing as you are making out.

Anyway, if you felt one way about a player, over 3 years, he should at least be required to suit up before you change your mind. I’m sure you didn’t have to do a degree on the players you chose to rate - so theoretically Mount could have easily been one of those, and if he wasn’t, then he wasn’t. Personally, I’ve always rated Mount, and I’m sure have said as much on here at some point. I think he’s a very good player. Just not good enough, I think we could do better.

Nothing about e-ego, it is actually very simple. If you think a player is great, you should be happy if your team signs him. If you think he’s poor, you shouldn’t, and if you think something in between, then your views should be somewhere in between. There is no obligation to be ecstatic if that’s not how you feel. People seem to think it is their duty as a fan to think a player is great because he signs for us. Which is ofd because fast forward one year, everyone thinks everyone is shit. And only then do they realise that they might have even felt that all along. Perhaps they were just being optimistic. Fact is, optimists/pessimist makes no difference to how well Mount does. So at least have and hold your own view on a footballer, otherwise you probably shouldn’t bother to watch football.

People were even putting spins on Weghorst in Jan about how it was a good idea, simply because Ten Hag brought him here. It’s as if you can’t simply say that you are not excited about a signing in this echo chamber. Anyone’s views can be changed over time, nobody’s view means they are a know it all like you are implying. There’s no party line, thinking differently is perfectly acceptable and not argumentative or contrarian for the sake of it. If Klopp rates Mount good for him. He rates Henderson, as does Southgate, but that can never make me a fan of Henderson.
 
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Grande

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i don't believe all this FFP noise from OT, (if this is to believed and maybe its just DM BS) apparently our crack negotiating team have managed to give Mount triple his Chelsea wages. I like the player, but come on.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...alary-Man-United-deal-worth-250-000-week.html
I read this as ‘ I don’t believe all this Frustration Free Packaging noise from Occupational Therapy, (if this is to believed and maybe it’s just Digital Multimedia Brodacasting Services).

Or did you mean defensive midfielder, bi-sexual?
 

roonster09

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Anyone can be wrong about a player. It should take more than your team being linked to him to be proven so though.

And it doesn’t matter how much you have watched a player. Fans would do well to remember that they are not required to be scouts, data analysts and all the rest. You watch plenty of football, and even without any sort of deep dive, there are players you rate just as much as there are players you don’t- and you don’t need to be a scout to be entitled to feel how you feel about a player you have watched. And everyone has watched enough Chelsea and England games, it’s not as passing as you are making out.

Anyway, if you felt one way about a player, over 3 years, he should at least be required to suit up before you change your mind. I’m sure you didn’t have to do a degree on the players you chose to rate - so theoretically Mount could have easily been one of those, and if he wasn’t, then he wasn’t. Personally, I’ve always rated Mount, and I’m sure have said as much on here at some point. I think he’s a very good player. Just not good enough, I think we could do better.
When you are linked with a player, you take greater interest to analyze a player and see what he brings to the team. I mean it would be unrealistic to analyze every player you watch, more often that not it's just casual watching without any keen interest on one player, it's more on the team and the general flow of the game, unless you are watching the player you are interested in.

You don't even have to change your mind, there are people (like me) who don't rate Mount as highly as others do but then when you take into account which all clubs are trying to sign him then you should at least given some benefit of doubt and be more open to the thought that you might be wrong about the player and your casual watching of player didn't give you enough information to assess the player properly.