He had a better first season than many posters on here will admit. And we didn't buy the finished article, ten Hag and the club knew when we bought him that he still had plenty of growing to do. I remember it was mentioned in a few articles that United recognized that Antony was a signing more for the future.
Manchester United name John Murtough as Football Director and Darren Fletcher as Technical Director
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
- Start date
De Jong had/has zero intention of leaving Barca. Kane, well you're dealing with Levy and the fee and wages involved would be astronomical .
Rice, not sure Ten Hag was overly bothered with .
De Jong didn't want to leave Barca, Levi would never sell to us and I'm not sure ETH wanted Rice
Prime? Robben might still produce more end product
Why are you making figures up?
If we end up paying the full €85m then he would have been worth it as a signing wouldn't you agree. He needs praise for being able to support the manager and has thus far resisted the urge to pull rank on him and impose unwanted players on him.
So we got the asking price down from €90m to €85m for someone who's less proven than Nunez. Don't get me wrong, I like the signing but wtf is this negotiation.
People were joking that the Atalanta negotiator was the guy who scammed us for £80m for Maguire but he's done it bloody again.
Granted, Hojlund is a striker, prices are inflated and the market is short of these players but come on. Don't anyone praise this guy as if he's rewriting the transfer negotiation book.
Yeah kudos to them. Big improvement.
I think next summer, if the season goes well and we get another top 3 finish plus some deep runs in the CL, FA and Carabao Cups, we will have room to make a truly marquee signing (RVPsque) that can raise our level to a PL and CL title challenging side. Because if Varane doesn't break down on us what else would we need besides maybe a starting RB?
Possibly RW, attacking LB (one with serious attacking production). Casemiro backup/replacement, backup CF
Thats my stance on the matter as well. The responsible people did well this summer and positive trend is stabilizing. Long may it continue. But I wouldn't call it a great job or awesome work. We have done really bad in the past, improving on that means, we have to go through subpar, average, decent, good areas until we may consider ourselves to be in very good territory. We don't do ourselves any favors by throwing around the "great work" sticker for the most basic achievements. I'll hope, they continue this upward spiral, this would be huge for the club in the future and it sure as hell is necessary to close the distance to the most successfull clubs.
I'd say that this also could be pure copium, wouldn't you agree? If you shell out this amount of cash, you expect instant output. Labeling it "a signing for the future" won't change the fact that we grossly overpaid for a player, who even at the time wasn't on the radar of many football fans for his potential. For this transfer to turn out a good signing, the player has to improve his output by a lot. That is the issue with the huge amounts these days, once a sum like this is paid, results are expected and little slack is given. And in my eyes, rightly so. (Same thing smashend AWB and Maguire as well, even though the latter wouldn't count as a young player)
True but then again we sold Elanga for 35m so it’s all good.
We’re doing this thing where we’re just making numbers up right?
Antony and Robben in the same sentence is like comparing Dan James with Valencia. They're only similar players if you compare their pace just as Antony and Robben have nothing in common other than cutting in to shoot.
Robben's best quality before he developed his trademark curler was his speed and dribbling ability. Also had a very good cross as he played on the left often.
So please lets stop with mentioning Robben in any way to Antony. His talent and ability is closer to Ashley Young than it is to Robben.
Robben's best quality before he developed his trademark curler was his speed and dribbling ability. Also had a very good cross as he played on the left often.
So please lets stop with mentioning Robben in any way to Antony. His talent and ability is closer to Ashley Young than it is to Robben.
How do you even make that argument? We only find out about the guys he wanted after he's signed them for the most part but among the ones he's rumoured to have wanted are Timber, De Jong, Kokcu, Robbey, Gakpo, Vitinha, Arnautovic none of whom landed (some for the best).
They have done well especially from employing Ole and Rangnick as manager to the quality of ETH. Then, they have revamped the scouting department resulting us going for target many didn't even heard before like Amrabat, Hojlund, Onana. We used to be going for galaticos signings. We have also completed signings all our major target before the season start.
Onana - 27
Mount - 24
Hojlund - 20
decent job at bringing the squad's average age down. Especially with DDG - 32 leaving, and potentially Fred - 30, and Maguire - 30 as well.
Mount - 24
Hojlund - 20
decent job at bringing the squad's average age down. Especially with DDG - 32 leaving, and potentially Fred - 30, and Maguire - 30 as well.
Even 27 for a goalkeeper looks a great age, just before hitting prime years that can last to late 30s.
In comparison to previous window, substantial improvement, and still whole month to do further deals, if needed.
Im sure there’s some he would have liked us to bring in and as you rightly say, Gakpo and De Jong in particular are ones that were well reported.
All I’d say is that he seems to have been very well supported and backed, since his appointment we’ve got almost a full starting 11 that wasn’t here before he joined (I’m including Amrabat in this), I’m sure if he could have had his pick he’d have had Kane up front with Rice and De Jong behind him but it’s unrealistic and would have damaged us financially in the long run, so it’s compromise on all parts and as you say, some of those rumours would have been poor signings so the club are right to push back where they don’t agree.
Surely we can all agree we look more joined up and efficient in the transfer market than any other time post SAF?
nobody really compared them
or does it really bother you if someone says “if Antony turned into a prime Robben”..?
I mean don’t you see the context of that sentence is basically inferring that Antony is no where near him?
but true.We definitely see improvement on the football structure.
From employing Ole and Rangnick (he was Murtough's choice) as manager to ETH, real class.
We used to mess around in transfer market like a fool. This window we completed 3 key signings prior to start of the season. We are still trying to sign a midfield as backup for Casemeiro.
From employing Ole and Rangnick (he was Murtough's choice) as manager to ETH, real class.
We used to mess around in transfer market like a fool. This window we completed 3 key signings prior to start of the season. We are still trying to sign a midfield as backup for Casemeiro.
I think Arnold has a lot to do with this too, not just murtough. With a firm or clear budget has been allocated months before or Arnold has empowered Murtough to make the decisions on his own.
It looks like we are a competent club again with Arnold & Murtough and the revamped scouting department. Most importantly I think ETH has lot of influence in this massive improvement of the way we are run.
Exactly. It was my suspicion that Woodward wanted full control of the club. So he divided n conquered. Resisted putting a DOF for years, unwilling to delegate authority.
Wonder were the guys who were in here angrily posting about what an incompetent idiot Murtough was after Mount was signed are now?
Still very much here and giving knee-jerkers a dose of cold realism.
Feel free to read my posts but of course that would require you to actually engage in discussion, as opposed to low-level twitter ramblings.
I'm not really interested in discussing things I have little knowledge of with people who have possibly even less knowledge of them, but act as if they're experts.
What's the idiom? Wrestling with a pig? Chess with a pigeon? Something like that.
What kind of dumbass logic is this? You say you know nothing, you don't want to discuss the topic (on a discussion forum) and then you fling your juvenile nothing statement out in the ether to sound like some level-headed genius.
Do you think you get internet cool points? I wonder why some of you bother with this stuff.
Not something you ever have to worry about, eh?
But seriously, I stated my point very plainly. It's not my fault you failed to comprehend it.
I see no evidence that Murtough is doing an amazing job. He's just targeting players Ten Hag wants and overpaying for them. The only positive is that he hasn't gone rogue and tried to make galactico signings like Woody did.
As long as the decision making ends up correct, the price is fine by me. The big things to evaluate him on are
(a) Is Ten Hag the right guy?
(b) Will we still end up with most people thinking we need 4-5 signings to compete at the end of this year?
For me, the metrics are points totals, xGD / 90, points delta to whoever wins the league. As long as we show improvement on those metrics, I don't really care how much we spend on signings because that means the strategy is working out.
(a) Is Ten Hag the right guy?
(b) Will we still end up with most people thinking we need 4-5 signings to compete at the end of this year?
For me, the metrics are points totals, xGD / 90, points delta to whoever wins the league. As long as we show improvement on those metrics, I don't really care how much we spend on signings because that means the strategy is working out.
Yeah, I think this is close to the reality. But would add that this doesn’t mean Murtough should be criticised in the slightest - he’s just actually doing his job. A job he is paid handsomely to do.
He’s not going above or beyond, or pulling off wonder deals, but conversely, he’s getting the players his manager wants fairly swiftly. Whether he’s getting the first choice or second or third, we don’t really know.
I think that Woodward did such an unbelievably bad job that just having someone simply do their job seems like an incredible achievement.
I also think most of what’s positive about Utd atm is down to ETH.
Yeah agreed
This is like when Obama got the Nobel peace prize for not being George Bush
He is getting what manager wants, but negotiation skill is questionable IMHO. So far it seems United is paying whatever selling club is asking, or very close to it. May be it's United tax the club has to pay regardless.
I do wonder what Woodward's approach was.
’Hey everyone. Just to let you know, we make the most fecking money out of all of you and it doesn’t matter how we perform on the pitch. Who wants to do business?’