Fair criticism and all but Woodward fired Solskjaer, not Murtough.
Manchester United name John Murtough as Football Director and Darren Fletcher as Technical Director
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
- Start date
That Antony signing is the only one I really put a negative on Murtough for. Should have not gone back in for him out of desperation. We surely had alternatives.
Our other signings have all been for comparable value (maybe not Hojlund but then you look at Ramos and Kolo Muani) and are good talents.
The only black mark I'd place on them is that a few of them have been way too ETH influenced.
The problem is Glazers don't care if Murtough is shit or not. If under Murtough, say our sponsorship dies and money deals collapse, then Glazers would fire Murtough.
But when we collapse in PL, as a result of Murtough allowing ETH to recruit an Eredivisie all start team, then the Glazers wouldn't fire Murtough for wasting money, yet again. They would fire ETH and say job done.
The manager does deserve some blame but I do agree it's basically Woodward all over again
Which of the signings do you think have been good?
Mount signing was even more nuts considering that a) we don’t need him; b) our third offer was a final offer, and then we increased the final offer.
When you increase final offers, every other club knows that your final offer is bullshit and will squeeze more money from you.
Our idiot club has still to realize that they have the power to walk away from negotiations, be it negotiating with other clubs, players or managers. Until they realize that, we would pay insane amount to other clubs, pay crazy salaries and give crazy power to managers. ETH doesn’t want Rangnick, then great, thanks but we will look at other managers. Ajax doesn’t sell Antony for 60m, then wish them good luck at selling him more. Mount want to increase his salary from 80k to 250k while Chelsea is offering only 150k, wish him good luck too.
Casemiro (kinda overpaid but still a good signing, not a great one though because of that), Martinez, Eriksen (free), Malacia (cheap and he's decent enough). Dubravka/Butland meh, they barely played and I don't think Butland did play. Weghorst and Sabitzer were meh signings too.
Antony was a poor signing, there's a player there but he's not going to live up to that price and we could have likely gotten a similar but more consistent player for cheaper.
This summer, Hojlund is kinda overpriced but I've softened my stance on that seeing how the striker market played out after we signed him. Amrabat on a loan deal with an option is good as we finally get a Casemiro backup. Bayindir, Evans and Reguilon meh.
Onana and Mount are the interesting ones here who could swing either way. Both good players but we could have likely gotten a similar quality goalie to Onana for much less looking at the goalies signed by other Prem clubs this summer. His abilities look like they could be replicated for cheaper but we'll see on that. Mount is a good player but there will be question marks on his fit. ETH obviously had an idea on how to use him but he's injured so who knows right now. For him personally opting for Liverpool or Arsenal who were interested in him might have been better fits so the jury is out. He's versatile so hopefully he'll manage to fit and ETH actually knows how to use him.
We had been told going into this summer that the club's structure had finally been modernized and we could expect a more competent approach to transfers.
I was already skeptical, but the Mount saga was the last straw for me. When we pretended to walk away, only to come back and pay the asking price (for a player in a role we didn't need to reinforce), it became clear beyond any doubt that the same clowns were still running the show and hadn't changed their approach at all.
Initially I was upset about that final offer thing with Mount but then the terms of what the amended offer and it's meh to me now. We're paying them what we would have paid anyway and if he does hit those achievement add-ons we'll not care about paying the extra.
I'm not hard and fast on these things once the logic makes sense to counter my stance.
David grew up in Bury, Greater Manchester, and started his career in the ticket office at Old Trafford before moving to Everton in 1995 and rising through the club’s ranks. He will leave Everton at the end of February and start at Carrington next month.
Big question mark over whether cssemiro was a good signing at the moment. He was very good for half a season and pretty shit since and has years left on his massive contract
Martinez, very good last season and terrible this but hopefully just recovering from injury
Eriksen, good last season but now looks worryingly past it
Mount is a weird one, can't imagine ever being good enough to earn his salary
Lost the will to keep going through them but looks pretty poor to me so far, made all the worse by the fact we mostly seem to just be looking at a limited pool of players eth has some sort of connection with
Like how you tagged me and not @Adnan
I’m just bored of regurgitating the same defence all the time. I get it, most of the forum don’t like him, also most of the forum have this weird belief of what a DoF actually does compared to what a DoF actually does in reality, so I cannot “win” either way.
This whole thread, instead of becoming a place to discuss has just become a Murtough bashing thread.
We all know the problem stems from above Murtough, but hey, we’ll choose to ignore that won’t we?
The problem…
There is not a single problem and Murtough is a problem.
Murtough is 4th on my list of our problems. He's below Our players being investigated by the police in 3rd and above Overpaid wasters having multiple contracts here in 5th.
His recruitment team signed off on one of those players whilst the player had active allegations against them. So he should be above whatever you have in 3rd.
What do you have in 2nd and 1st?
Also something in your top 5 is probably something you should be fixing now
@Adnan the scouting network and Data analysis teams we hired for recruitment.
Have they produced any results yet?
Have they produced any results yet?
Do you want me to list all the players from the youth to the first team?
Yes the ones we have signed as a result of Dominic Jordans team that new team that have been in place for a year? Or maybe a bit more?
I’ll be honest it’s more fun taking the micky with you
Fair. The Greenwood thing is even worse than the Antony situation. I'd have Glazers at 1 and Arnold at 2. I'm working down tbh.
Let's be honest, none of that is getting fixed.
I'm just focusing on the rugby and formula 1 this year.
Haha! To be fair, that made me smile. Maybe it’s the sometimes overly optimistic outlook i have that makes me a little easy to wind upI’ll be honest it’s more fun taking the micky with you
Mount and Hojlund have been signed to raise the level in specific areas of the pitch. Data is only used to backup the scouts when it comes improving the decision making process.
Liverpool have had their data department since 2012 and if you took a look at how they recruited in the first few years of appointing Dr Graham and his team, then it became apparent the data department was malfunctioning. It was even reported that the 'Graham model' deemed Sadio Mane not to be of the required standard in 2014 and Van Dijk being too inexperienced from Celtic. Both players Rodgers apparently wanted.
I think all 3 will be gone in 12 months personally.Fair. The Greenwood thing is even worse than the Antony situation. I'd have Glazers at 1 and Arnold at 2. I'm working down tbh.
Let's be honest, none of that is getting fixed.
I'm just focusing on the rugby and formula 1 this year.
I also think Murtough is a bigger problem than Arnold who is just a yes man for the Glazers and has no real authority.
Arnold is there just to agree the budget with the Glazers and and sign off on the spend.
Murtough has a direct impact on the on the pitch running of the club.
Glazers ultimately are no1 problem but for me Murtough us a strong second. And if we actually had someone competent in his role I actually believe a lot of the issues with the Glazers could be masked.
So basically 2 signings. Cool lets see how they get on. I like the Hojlund signing (fee aside) not enamoured by Mount given his profile vs what we had/needed and his wages
What happened to the youth signings you mentioned?
I think new owners would likely sack ETH and maybe this is the beginning of planting that seed in preparation.
You specifically asked for first team signings. And the data analytics has been applied at youth level since 2015 from what I know.
I did think this was shady when i heard that Amrabat and Hojland had both recently joined the SEG agency just before they signed for United. Gakpo joined them too.
Not a good look, especially when Ten Hag's son works for that agency.
Some seriously weird conspiracy thinking here.
Maybe this is more likely - the media have sniffed easy clicks after Nevilles "I wonder if transfers were good enough" and thought to piggy back off the Monday night podcast with a pile of BS.
I see no reason why new owners would keep the manager
They're only now expressing concerns? Surely the time to express concerns was when we were attempting to sign players and he was involved.
In what way does he have an impact?
No one hear knows his exact roles and responsibilities.
We do know roles and responsibilities they were published.
He is responsible for hiring and managing all sporting positions including the manager/head coach and all player recruitment functions.
You specifically mentioned the team that has been in place for a year. So please forgive me if I misunderstood your post because I thought you meant over a longer period of time.
At youth level we've signed Harry Amass who is rated among the best 16 year olds in his position at domestic level. And that was a big signing at youth level due to the competition for his signature. Biancheri is another youngster we've signed and we reportedly beat out Chelsea for his signature. But what I'm really excited about is the potential of some of the young central midfielders that have been at the club for a while now. Players like Fitzgerald, MacAllister, Moorhouse etc look very gifted for their respective age groups and are players who can receive and progress the ball in tight spaces. I'm very hopeful at least one of the aforementioned players will make it into the first team. And that's on top of having Mainoo, Gore, Hannibal etc who are also press resistant midfielders. Which is a change from the likes of Garner and Laird who were players that were very good but imo not as good against the opponent's press.
If you believe ETH is the right man, then he has done a good job there.
He has brought in the player Ten Hag wanted.
He has not brought in the players ETH wanted this summer. No amount of pretending is going to change that fact.
Also the job of recruitment is not to bring in the players the manager wants. Its to bring in the players the club needs. The whole point of having a coherent recruitment policy and strategy is that the players you sign work for the club irrespective of the manager.
It has also not removed from the squad players the manager clearly wanted out and player who clearly over stayed their welcome
Then you're a bit dim
It's a clickbait article and frankly quite hilarious how many thick people are falling for it