Manchester United ready to back José Mourinho with £100m-plus in January

[cyberman]

And Jose has spent what over the past 2 years, peanuts?

Thats not my point. The argument was that Liverpool have shown that you don't need to spend money to bring a side up a level.
Are Liverpool spending monopoly money? Thats exactly what they're doing.
If you ignore their expensive signings then sure, they're a shining example to us all.

 

[roonster09]

The big money was spent when we dropped out of top 4.
When LVG got us top 4, the following Summer, we didn't spend much.
When Jose got us a solid 2nd place, well within top 4, we didn't spend much.
It was pretty clear that the board pulled the plug on funding a league title. Once Jose submitted his transfers necessary to do this, the cost was so large, it made no financial sense.
From a business perspective it doesn't make any sense to win the league, given the cost involved and the extra income generated is minimal. Basically, it's a loss maker.

ManUtd spent 140 million in Van Gaal's second season. Yes Di Maria left but it's not like Van gaal missed out on any signings. We signed first choice RB (Darmian), one of the best young player (Depay), complete new midfield (Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger), and Martial. That's 5 first team players.

Also in Jose's second season when we were in CL, Manutd spent 150 million plus Sanchez in a swap deal. How is that not spending? No club has spent more money in the league except City in that period.

Yeah, it's not like winning more league titles means we will be getting much bigger sponsorship deals. That's how this club reached this level. Also such a shame we don't have unlimited money to keep on spending. Also what a cnuts PL are for restricting the squad size. Do you know how many players have we registered and how many slots are left?

Regarding salaries - our negotiations team is terrible at negotiating salaries with agents. They want to offer a cheaper deal, but they are so bad at doing their job that the agent of the player always wins.

Funny when minimal investment theory falls flat, argument shifts to negotiations team is terrible. So it's not like we are saving money or not spending, it's just that we are not spending wisely which is completely different form club not spending money.

Still not convinced about the "saving money" theme? Try this:
Some of our players, including Martial, DDG and (just recently) Shaw had allowed their contracts to run down (Arsenal did something very similar).
Fans are asking: why have we (and Arsenal) allowed this to happen? it makes no sense.
Answer: From a business angle, it makes complete sense.
Let's say you have player X. A top player. Currently being paid by MUFC £100k. His contract runs out in 24 months.
Scenario1: we offer him a contract now, for £150k. He signs. For the next 2 years we pay him 104 x £150k = £15600000 = £15.6M
Scenario2: we offer him a contract in 12 months, for £150k. He signs. For the next 2 years we pay him (52 x £100k) + (52 x £150k) = £13000000 = £13M

Yeah, it's as if we only offer contracts when they have only 1 year left on the contract. It's not like it's more than a year that we are offering contract to De Gea, Martial who haven't signed and still negotiating. Also it's just ridiculous point. Thank God club don't think that way. Cost of saving 2 million or risk of losing 50 million worth asset for nothing? Yeah tough choice

Notice that Scenario2 (running contracts down to the last year) saves roughly £2.6M. Now, let's say that we do this for 10 players on big wages. We'd save roughly £26M!
Get my drift?

Yeah, that it's a ridiculous point so far from reality and very close to fantasy. No club negotiates contract only when players are in last year of contract.

You will also notice that I mentioned Arsenal. I did this because Arsenal always went for 4th place, while spending the least amount of money. This makes great business sense and we are following AFC's business principles.

In summary, aiming for 4th place, while spending as little as possible on transfers will yield the highest return on investment.
Renewing contracts, towards the end of the current contract saves even more money.
If we drop out of top 4, to get back into the top 4, big money on transfers should be spent.
If we are safely in the top 4, to remain in the top, low money on transfers should be spent.
If we do spend big on a player, he should be young (have a good resale value) and be highly marketable (allowing the MUFC brand to be followed/sold to potential sponsors in that player's country).

The entire model is based on money making.

Except we spend 2nd most money on transfers and spend highest in wages in the league. So Arsenal comparison is just non sense.

In summary, just a laughable post with so many assumptions and little substance. Btw there is a good chance this will be missed, we have registered 24 players in PL squad, so we can register 1 more player. So we have to sell before buying. Also we can't register anyone in CL as Dalot should be registered for CL squad.

 

[fellaini's barber]

Thats not my point. The argument was that Liverpool have shown that you don't need to spend money to bring a side up a level.
Are Liverpool spending monopoly money? Thats exactly what they're doing.
If you ignore their expensive signings then sure, they're a shining example to us all.

The point everyone is making is that you don't need to spend half a billion to play good football which is what Liverpool have been doing even with worse players than ours even before they were able to make big signings. They were in the CL final while we were dumped out by Sevilla. Forget Liverpool for a second now what about Spurs? How are they better than us too?

 

[johanovic]

We can not waste more transfer windows and we need to make some shrewd buys and sells in january:
Sell:
Darmian,Jones,Rojo,Sanchez(if we can)

Players of the calibre we should be aiming to sign:
De Light and De Jong from Ajax, Lozano from PSV, Sancho from Dortmund, Upamecano from RB Leipzig,Kimmich from Bayern, Ndombele and Fekir from Lyon, Koulibaly and Allan from Napoli, Icardi and Skrinar from Inter.
Of course we are not going to sign every player mentioned here but my belief is they are of the standard we should be looking to sign. We need to buy much smarter than we have done in the past years and could the 100 million plus the fee from sales make it possible for us to get some of those players? Say for example if we could get Ndombele,Koulibaly or Skrinar and De Jong? I am sure those 3 would make a lot of difference for us as would any of the other players.

Loan
Could we make a loan agreement with an option to buy for either Dembele/Malcom from Barca for the right wing position?

Promote
Should Chong,Gomes,Laird,Garner and Greenwood be promoted to the squad?

 

[cyberman]

The point everyone is making is that you don't need to spend half a billion to play good football which is what Liverpool have been doing even with worse players than ours even before they were able to make big signings. They were in the CL final while we were dumped out by Sevilla. Forget Liverpool for a second now what about Spurs? How are they better than us too?

No, the argument was to bring a side up a level. They played good football lat year and finished 4th. They spend 300 odd million since January so they can compete with City and build on their CL run.
You don't have to spend money to play open football but you do need to spend if you want open football and win.
IMO they played better football last year but they're more dogged this season because they're set up to win.
Spurs aren't better than us.

 

[Siorac]

No, the argument was to bring a side up a level. They played good football lat year and finished 4th. They spend 300 odd million since January so they can compete with City and build on their CL run.
You don't have to spend money to play open football but you do need to spend if you want open football and win.
IMO they played better football last year but they're more dogged this season because they're set up to win.
Spurs aren't better than us.

Mourinho spent roughly the same amount as Klopp did during his tenure, starting off from a better position and not having to sell his best player.

So yeah, spending is necessary. And we did spend. And yet we are nowhere.

 

[cyberman]

Mourinho spent roughly the same amount as Klopp did during his tenure, starting off from a better position and not having to sell his best player.

So yeah, spending is necessary. And we did spend. And yet we are nowhere.

Utd had the pressure to compete with City from day 1 though. Jose would have gotten destroyed if he was here 4 years and never finished above 4th.
You spend to improve. They spent the same yet Jose has a few cups to his name and a higher league poistion than Klopp has ever managed with Liverpool.
If Klopp finishes a comfortable 2nd behind City I guarantee they won't be seen as the failures we were.

 

[Siorac]

Utd had the pressure to compete with City from day 1 though. Jose would have gotten destroyed if he was here 4 years and never finished above 4th.
You spend to improve. They spent the same yet Jose has a few cups to his name and a higher league poistion than Klopp has ever managed with Liverpool.
If Klopp finishes a comfortable 2nd behind City I guarantee they won't be seen as the failures we were.

We are nowhere near competing with City and he's still here. So I'm not sure about that pressure.

I'd also swap Liverpool's last two seasons for ours to be honest. A Champions League final and entertaining football sound quite good.

 

[cyberman]

We are nowhere near competing with City and he's still here. So I'm not sure about that pressure.

I'd also swap Liverpool's last two seasons for ours to be honest. A Champions League final and entertaining football sound quite good.

Ah there's pressure. We were destroyed towards the end of last season, every City goal was used against us.
I don't think we would find their brand of football entertaining if we were watching City win and pull away every week. Add in how they seem to be getting worse results v the big sides for a while now.
Imagine the graphs if it were us!

 

[Shark]

Thats not my point. The argument was that Liverpool have shown that you don't need to spend money to bring a side up a level.
Are Liverpool spending monopoly money? Thats exactly what they're doing.
If you ignore their expensive signings then sure, they're a shining example to us all.

Liverpool have shown that signing players that suit the managers system is key. We don’t have a worse team than them and arguably haven’t done worse business, we’ve just signed a bunch of top class players and hoped it’d all get together without any sort of football identity, sort of the way City did back in the days they signed Tevez. We need the right manager to come in and make this team what it should be, as we only see very short glimpses currently under Jose.

 

[IrishMcD]

We can not waste more transfer windows and we need to make some shrewd buys and sells in january:
Sell:
Darmian,Jones,Rojo,Sanchez(if we can)

Players of the calibre we should be aiming to sign:
De Light and De Jong from Ajax, Lozano from PSV, Sancho from Dortmund, Upamecano from RB Leipzig,Kimmich from Bayern, Ndombele and Fekir from Lyon, Koulibaly and Allan from Napoli, Icardi and Skrinar from Inter.
Of course we are not going to sign every player mentioned here but my belief is they are of the standard we should be looking to sign. We need to buy much smarter than we have done in the past years and could the 100 million plus the fee from sales make it possible for us to get some of those players? Say for example if we could get Ndombele,Koulibaly or Skrinar and De Jong? I am sure those 3 would make a lot of difference for us as would any of the other players.

Loan
Could we make a loan agreement with an option to buy for either Dembele/Malcom from Barca for the right wing position?

Promote
Should Chong,Gomes,Laird,Garner and Greenwood be promoted to the squad?

Absolutely agree with every name mentioned above and I'd add McTomminay to the "outs" and Houssam Aouar to the potential "ins"

 

[Kag]

Thats not my point. The argument was that Liverpool have shown that you don't need to spend money to bring a side up a level.
Are Liverpool spending monopoly money? Thats exactly what they're doing.
If you ignore their expensive signings then sure, they're a shining example to us all.

Who made that argument?

 

[Walters_19_MuFc]

Who's out there good enough to purchase in Jan?

To me, we may as well wait until we can get who we want, rather than rushing and buying someone we dont really want.

 

[elmo]

Should have backed him in the summer transfer window. I swear we’re runned by idiots.

 

[cyberman]

Who made that argument?

Liverpool are practically top of the table with Gini Wijnaldum and James Milner in central midfield. Their right back is younger than Dalot. Joe Gómez was about as unproven as Axel Tuanzebe prior to last season and Andy Robertson was a £7 million punt from Hull City. Their manager has made it work due to his methods.

You're arguing manager methods v spending or did I read that wrong?
Even Klopps methods needs 400m worth of players in his squad or else they finish 3rd / 4th / 8th

 

[charlenefan]

https://www.skysports.com/football/...ourinho-as-transfer-window-talks-get-underway

 

[ObieDeMoon]

Considering Zaha said living in Manchester drove him to depression, I'd rather not.

Hahaa true story but we need someone to light up the right side and Willy has unfinished business with our club.

 

[cheeky_backheel]

The current United squad is not a level below the likes of Chelsea or Liverpool. Reading this tedious shite is simply tedious. The deflation of the existing playing squad in support of a cooked manager has been persistent since Ferguson retired even in spite of the the ever-improving and ever-expensive squad of players we’ve been building.

The mods on this forum should make this my tagline given how often I say it: Liverpool are practically top of the table with Gini Wijnaldum and James Milner in central midfield. Their right back is younger than Dalot. Joe Gómez was about as unproven as Axel Tuanzebe prior to last season and Andy Robertson was a £7 million punt from Hull City. Their manager has made it work due to his methods.

More quality players will take us to the “top level”? Keep banging that head, lad. It won’t break the wall.

and what has Liverpool won?

 

[ObieDeMoon]

and what has Liverpool won?

Sweet F A lad!

 

[cheeky_backheel]

If buying players for whatever price doesn't equate to players having needed quality, then why are we talking about even more players. Still we would have had same argument, that signed players are of not needed quality because Jose can't get best out of them. We have signed the players Jose wanted for 2 years and still we are so far from competing, so why do you think adding few more Jose players will change any of that?

These are all Jose signed players, we would have added few more ageing players who would have been hard to get rid of. I'm glad we didn't sign few more 29-30 year old players.

Also you have ignored the squad size. We have completed the slots, even for new manager unless we offload, we can't sign new players. This has nothing to do with "sell to buy" policy. We have registered 24 players something that is ignored everytime.

Also forgetting all the arguments, how is spending 2nd/3rd most on transfer fee and spending 2nd most in wages equate to lacking ambition and settling for top 4. FFS we have spent money, so how can we be new Arsenal.

Whether players are of required quality or whether they are West Brom level is different discussion, how can anyone say club is trying with minimal spend is beyond me.

1. The quality of a player can be evaluated outside of his price tag. The argument of jose not gettng the best out of a player would be valid if there was empirical evidence in support of it but the opposite is true e.g. mkhi is not lighting it up for arsenal, lukaku goal drought is not unusual, shaw looks better than when mou took over, sanchez+matic+valencia+young have declined due to age not coaching etc. we were progressing in the right direction until last summer when need improvement was not made.

2. The only ageing player bought was Matic, and rumor was that Dier was Mourinho's preferred choice. Sanchez was exchanged for Mkhi who was of similar age. The ageing players like young and valencia were inherited.

3.Every club works with a full squad and you dont have to register everyone on your squad. Also you typically buy the new player before offloading the old. thus the argument of squad space doesnt hold.

4. The question is what happened last summer? we finished 2nd last season but the squad neededobvious reinforcements but these were not added and thus it can be said the board spent minimally. The alternative would be we didnt have the money but then were has the rumored 100m suddenly come from?

 

[roonster09]

Every club works with a full squad and you dont have to register everyone on your squad. Also you typically buy the new player before offloading the old. thus the argument of squad space doesnt hold.

We should buy and keep players unregistered.

 

[Jagga7]

Should have backed him in the summer transfer window. I swear we’re runned by idiots.

Quite ironic!

 

[Kag]

Liverpool are practically top of the table with Gini Wijnaldum and James Milner in central midfield. Their right back is younger than Dalot. Joe Gómez was about as unproven as Axel Tuanzebe prior to last season and Andy Robertson was a £7 million punt from Hull City. Their manager has made it work due to his methods.

You're arguing manager methods v spending or did I read that wrong?
Even Klopps methods needs 400m worth of players in his squad or else they finish 3rd / 4th / 8th

Klopp’s coaching allows the team to play attacking football with those players, yes. His coaching is the main reason they are near the top of the league, in spite of having inferior players to City.

Spending money to improve on the likes of Klavan and Lovren helps, nobody has ever disputed that. Van Dijk was a necessary purchase. But he’d look shite in a poorly coached side. That is the reality. Plucking strawman and pitting spending and coaching against each other serves no real purpose. Both are needed to be ultimately successful.

As for United, we just spend.

 

[giorno]

That doesn't read like the club is now ready to spend £50m on Boateng or £70m on Maguire. More like there's a lot of money to be invested for the right players. Which is no different from last summer

 

[Kag]

and what has Liverpool won?

What has that got to do with my point about current events in the league?

 

[IrishGlen]

Yeah and I’d spend thousands on a diamond for Margot Robbie if she were single but she’s not.

Strikes me as a form of appeasement. It’s great if there’s substantial money set aside for reinforcements however I really don’t think it will be happening in January. Varane, Koulibaly, Skriniar - no chance. Alderweireld is available for £25m next summer so I doubt the club would be so foolish to pay 70/75m for him 6 months earlier. Pavard is probably the most realistic however he’s Bayern bound according to reports.

As for attackers - Someone would definitely have to leave first. It would be nigh on impossible bringing in an Icardi or a Dybala in January. (£100m probably wouldn’t buy either anyway). A rung below - I dread to think of the price Inter would want for Perišić midway through a season. Players like Fekir who were available last summer won’t be unless a bid “is too good to turn down” aka exorbitantly overpriced.

I just hope that IF there’s a signing made it’s a club signing and not a José signing. I’m not even criticizing Mourinhos recruitment policy or anything - he’s just unlikely to be here next year so going out and spunking big money on a player he fancies but the next manager likely won’t six months before the formers departure isn’t desirable.

 

[cheeky_backheel]

We should buy and keep players unregistered.

its been done before. not every player always gets registered for every competition

 

[cheeky_backheel]

What has that got to do with my point about current events in the league?

cos it is a question of what is needed to win, and if u r not winning u cannot be used as an example of what it takes.

if the aim is to simply first of the losers, then you can use Liverpool as a ref

 

[cheeky_backheel]

Sweet F A lad!

and not with klopp

 

[#07]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[klsv]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Dawson reporting the same for ESPN. Who'd brief such thing?

 

[El Zoido]

I was tired of this in the summer, yet here we are again. Back him or sack him, this nonsense is harming the club.

 

[VP89]

We failed with Maguire in the summer. He's obviously not attainable in January just after signing a new contract ffs. I call bullshit

 

[breakout67]

We failed with Maguire in the summer. He's obviously not attainable in January just after signing a new contract ffs. I call bullshit

It is bullshit. English press have a spotty record for our transfers. Fabio Capello said out of nowhere that he knew we were after 2 Seria A defenders (one was Koulibaly), soon after the transfer window closed. Add to this that the Napoli president said that a PL club bid big for Koulibaly that they rejected, there's a good chance it was us.

 

[yamo123x]

I can see a signing in Jan just to appease the manager if the club are that intent on supporting and keeping him.

However don't be surprised if nothing happens in January, and Mourinho jogs off to Madrid at the first opportunity, it might suit all parties if he does that.

I watched the game live sunday and for me there were 4 blatantly obvious factors, firstly we must keep pogba at all costs. However Shaw,Matic and Mata are weak links and are in need of upgrading.

Ramsey and Maguire are must signings in my opinion.

 

[VP89]

It is bullshit. English press have a spotty record for our transfers. Fabio Capello said out of nowhere that he knew we were after 2 Seria A defenders (one was Koulibaly), soon after the transfer window closed. Add to this that the Napoli president said that a PL club bid big for Koulibaly that they rejected, there's a good chance it was us.

Yeah I'm convinced Jose is looking at Serie A for defenders to bring here. A lot of them can probably teach defence at Stamford or MIT.

 

[Red00012]

I don’t want us to sign maguire I think Toby is a better option, but Levy mightn’t allow it.

 

[Tincanalley]

Stable door
Horse
Bolted

Dust's off hands with a firm clap. "Yess", says Ed, not without some air of self-satisfaction. "Bolted!"

 

[Tincanalley]

Ed gives terrrible briefing.

 

[sunama]

Should have backed him in the summer transfer window. I swear we’re runned by idiots.

Exactly!
By all means, they should have told him that Martial and Pogba are not for sale, but they should've given the green light for some of his other transfer targets.
By undermining him, it completely derailed the Jose's mindset, which definitely influenced our early season results.
I think that we are currently getting back on track, but we have lost a lot of points due to the nonsense which took place in the Summer.
Jose will need to use all his experience to make up the lost ground.

The worrying thing is that if the board pull another trick like this, next Summer, regardless of who the manager is, we shall be back to square one, fighting for the 4th place trophy.