You mean long before player prices vastly inflated? OK then.
So why bring up the idiotic stats on money spent then? So you knew there was inflation and yet to presented the stats regardless cos you thought you were debating with an illiterate? Mourinho also spent money during the era of vastly inflated prices so your point does not hold water. Mourinho bought Pogba and Lukaku for £89m and £75m respectively.
So he invested poorly then? You admit he bought poorly which is the entire point of the thread ya clown.
Bravo was 17m, we spent more on De Gea... 5 years previous. Nolito likewise was £14m. Bailly cost more than both of them alone!
Karius & Klavan didn't together, didn't even cost £10m. Jesus wept what utterly stupid comparisons.
Why do you care how much was spent? The crux of the issue is only Mourinho gets criticised for trying to replace a player he bought. How much was spent is vastly irrelevant. According to your theory, Pep and Klopp also bought poorly but they were backed by their respective boards to replace their mistakes.
Oh great, you see the difference then.
Weren't Karius & Klavan largely "unproven" as well? I mean Klavan's biggest club prior to Liverpool was Augsburg or AZ Alkmaar! Karius was very much an untested rookie, only experience was Mainz!
You've just contradicted yourself here between the above 2 sentiments.
You are still debating yourself. Karius and Klavan were unproven - Klopp bought them and he was allowed to replace them. Lindelof and Bailly were also unproven but Jose was vetoed off when he asked for Toby Alderweireld and Boateng. How can you not see the difference?
Besides, there are several rumours that Bailly and Lindelof were even scouted and imposed on Jose by Woodward. Throughout his career, there has never been a time he used unproven rookies in his defence. He's a highly defensive manager who always used players with wealth of experience in his defence. Carvalho, Ramos Lucio, Zanetti, Terry, etc.
What's it matter, end goal is winning the league? He was further away than LVG was.
Spin it anyway you like, he failed miserably and your utterly brainwashed... what is known as a Joseite.
LVG finished with
70 points in 14/15 and
66 points in 15/16. Deduct those points from the record breaking Pep side that finished with 100 points. He was further away? How did you arrive at that conclusion? Did you use abacus counting?
He was utterly destroyed by Pep!
With the quality of players at their disposal, this was inevitable. Pep was given a job where it's impossible to fail.
Pep inherited a squad with some ageing players, players under performing and over paid. He shifted dead wood, something Jose simply didn't do to raise funds for further transfers. Pray tell how LVG & Ole both managed to shift on dead wood but Jose couldn't in rebuilding? You know well he feckin failed miserably but pains you to admit it.
Ageing players that got into CL semis - a feat Pep is yet to achieve with his megabillions. The same ageing players won the league 2 seasons before Pep's arrival. The same ageing players never dropped out of top 4. Keep deluding yourself comparing their quality to United's. United made top 4 once in that period. They finished 7th under Moyes, 4th and 5th under LVG.
In Jose's first 2 season's here he openly praised the board, stated openly he got 7 of 8 of his desired players. He had Zero, zero... excuses for failing as bad as he did.
And he delivered in those first two seasons. This club had forgotten what it meant to be in the Champions League. Jose qualified United for CL throughout his stay at United and he even went further to get United into the KO stage. Something his predecessors couldn't achieve consistently.
On top of that due to his continual demands of big name signings we saw our wage bill double (46%) during his 2 years approx here.
You gave Rooney £300k/week. When quality players(Pogba, Ibra, Sanchez, etc) arrived, it was only natural they wanted the same. The wage structure was destroyed long before Jose arrived. Stop blaming everything on Jose.
Pep largely kept City's wage budget under control due to the outgoing as just pointed out.
This is complete and utter, utter, utter.... Bollicks!
The stats state otherwise. United won only the FA cup in the 3 seasons after SAF. Jose took over and won 2 trophies in his debut.
Jose took over a young team on the up. He was announced on the day of us winning our first trophy post Fergie, a team that finished level on points with City who you said were in better shape than us... so which is it? You can't have it both way for god sake.
City were in a better shape than United. City achieved their objective - they made top 4, United didn't. Stop colouring failure with beautiful words like finishing level on points with City. City made semi finals of the CL that season & they won the Premier League trophy the previous season. How can you compare their squad with United who were eliminated in the group stage of CL, got demoted to Europa league and still got eliminated in the round of 16? Are you trolling?
A team on the up?
If City were a better team and Pep had less work, does that mean LVG over achieved?
LVG didn't overachieve, he was shit. Pep and LVG never competed head to head. Stop with the daft comparison.
Fast forward a year City were 9pts ahead, fast forward 2 years... 19pts. By the time he got sacked.... 12pts after 17 games!
Conveniently forgetting Pep had spent about £250m on his defence while United persisted with ex-wingers that were 32 years of age in their full backs. All the defenders Pep got rid of at City would conveniently walk into Man Utd's XI. That's the gulf in quality in between both clubs.
Did I also mention Ederson, Mendy, Walker, Stones and Laporte were all record signings at the time they were bought? Yet, you think it was the same level playing field comparing these seasoned players to Smalling, Jones, Young, Valencia, etc.
You are hilarious!!
But he was a glowing success right?
The best achievement since SAF - there's no debating.
He has input and its naive to suggest otherwise.
He demands certain players and Ed / Board has to be seen supporting him in turn.
He only provided the list of the players he wanted. It was up to Ed and co to either approve or admit it. That's no input. FFS, Jose asked for Perisic to complement the Lukaku signing but the board felt Lingard and Mata could fill the void.
I mean he demanded Fellaini be kept ffs and here you are defending him? How utterly clueless can you be man! Darmian as well, refused to sell him time and time again...goes back to my point above about not selling deadwood.
The same Fellaini that was instrumental to all the trophies and success United have had since his arrival. I'm now very confident you are one of the media-brainwashed sheep that just kowtow whatever gibberish that comes out of Gary Neville, Jamie Redknapp and the other morons in Sky studios. So how has the club fared since Fellaini's departure. Lingard took Fellaini's space since January - a youngster at 27 with 0 goals and 0 assists in all of 2019.
Of course, Fellaini was the problem.
If he's demanding big names like Zlatan (16m in wages), Pogba (15m), Sanchez (24m) and Rom (12m)... its on him as much as anyone else.
We are paying the price for his childish demands.
It's not on him that the new players met a wage structure that already had one player copping £300k/week. If the highest paid player was on £150k/week before Zlatan's arrival, they would never have demanded double of that. Rashford is on £250k/week - handed to him by Ed. Kane & Aguero earn less. Maybe you will blame Jose for that too.
Who's signing him ffs? He's with Sky!
He's finished completely.
Shocking, utterly feckin shocking we've folks defending him.
I shall remind you when he gets the next big job. It's not even up to a year since his last job. Why are you so sure he won't get another job?
He's the most damaging manager hired in the post Fergie years.
He's the most successful post Fergie too. Maybe, just maybe you don't understand what it takes to be successful. You have a creative manager now - lying 8th on the league table with a squad he was extremely happy with preseason.
His term here saw our spending become utterly reckless, he created player power, enforced half arsed efforts from senior players and refused to drop them (Rom & Matic), ignored youth (Martial & Rashford were 2 of Europe's best young talents in 2016 and have never recovered since). He openly abused the clubs history, mocked the Munich disaster by showing up in a feckin track suit, mocked players and fell out with the board, enforced players openly being unprofessional over social media...
He ignored youths? Rashford had more games under his belt than Ronaldo for United at the same age. Are you kidding me? Where do you get this misinformation from? Martial blew hot and cold and Jose axed him for his weird attitude. The treatment worked a treat - he was the goal getter before Jose himself got sacked by the inept Man Utd board.
Jose will not cuddle mediocre players and we have seen that even his successor can't seem to get the best out of these players.The narrative when Jose was here was that he was stifling Rashford with his defensive approach. Months later, it was because Jose didn't play him in the centre forward position. Jose got sacked and Ole was hired.
What has become the outcome since then? Rashford has 3 goals in 21 appearances from open play. The regular goal-getter(Lukaku) was hounded out by Sky pundits. He's on top of the league in Italy right now where Rashford(the best player since Pele) can't finish off Astana. Can't you just see that the media are just feeding you lots with nonsense? Think outside the box for once and admit everything you have heard from Skysports is complete bollocks.
But hey, he won a league cup and Europa so he's a feckin god to his brain washed followers.
He's been gone for 10 months now - we should be seeing changes already. Brendan Rodgers and Lampard have shown more promises than our current manager in the little time they have been at their jobs. Ole is faltering - 5 wins in the last 19 games. His team(the same one Jose held back) has scored a total of 17 goals in the last 16 games and there's been no away win since PSG.
However, he's positive, he believes in the youth, his style of play is attacking. We can ignore the poor results and focus on the positivity and the fat arm he wraps around the players that aren't performing for him.
You said Ole managed to shift 'deadwoods' - something Jose couldn't do while here. How has this panned out? No fit striker at the club. 2 goals down and the only hope was to bring on Lingard(goalless in 2019) to salvage the game. Jose wasn't interested in shifting 'deadwoods' because there was no promise of replacement. Ole took the dive regardless and it's come back to bite him in the arse.
When we finish 12th this season, I shall seek your opinion. I am going to ask whether we have progressed or regressed.
Have a nice day.....