Official: Harry Maguire signs a new deal

You can't just judge on wages alone. What matters is total cost of the player: wages + fee. Maguire has been with us so long there's no wage to amortize any more, which makes his overall cost very reasonable, even if kept at 190k.

It sounds like we may have gotten 150k or so, which I'd say is team friendly. 100k a week is like average PL starter at this point. No way you're signing him for that on a free without a big signing on bonus.

£150k would still be ahead of our first choice CB. Lisandro has been on £120k since he signed. de Ligt obviously came in around the same as Maguire.
Now obviously Lisandro himself has his own problems. None of Maguire, Lisandro or de Ligt have been available enough this season although Maguire has played the most mins of them so far. But the point is £120k is considered fine for a big signing CB coming in as first choice as Lisandro has been - yet Maguire was on £190k and even if hes on 150k its still significantly more than the 120k of a new first choice CB. So no its not okay its still far overpaid and I dont think any of our rivals would have Maguire on that after having him stay all that time on superstar wages after a failed megamoney move.

Again he is a decent CB. He's not worse than Lisandro or de Ligt, they're all about the same level just have different styles. But being around as good as 2 other CBs in the 11th best defensive record team shouldn't reward you with 150k per week. Only a club who usually make poor financial decisions would do that.
 
Sounded like you had a big dislike for him. I’ll have to take your word for it. Although, frankly I’m lost on your reasoning why you are so against him signing a new contract on reduced terms.

Who cares what he was paid. Is he worth £130-150k over the next year? Yes.

That’s a fairly simple equation. Again the opposite of your sunk cost fallacy.

He’s been our best defender for a long time.

We need to buy 2 midfielders this summer and they won’t be cheap. A left back should be next in the list. There are other areas we need to improve as well, keeping Maguire for another year alleviates some pressure on the CB issue.

So to paint this as some sort of bleak, dark day in the history of United, is utterly ridiculous. At worst you should be indifferent, rather than doubling down on your disgust for him signing a new contract.

He'd have had to have been offered and accepted half his wages to make any sense of keeping him an extra year. Unless the article posted is wrong and there were no offers of higher than that, I dont think its reasonable hed stay from his own perspective. He wasnt even first choice going into this season. He's played because other players are injured. We'll probably sign another defender. So he's choosing to stay for half his wages as a 3rd choice? Its what a fan thinks he should do. Not what a player would do for themselves when they are putting themselves and their family first.
 
£150k would still be ahead of our first choice CB. Lisandro has been on £120k since he signed. de Ligt obviously came in around the same as Maguire.
Now obviously Lisandro himself has his own problems. None of Maguire, Lisandro or de Ligt have been available enough this season although Maguire has played the most mins of them so far. But the point is £120k is considered fine for a big signing CB coming in as first choice as Lisandro has been - yet Maguire was on £190k and even if hes on 150k its still significantly more than the 120k of a new first choice CB. So no its not okay its still far overpaid and I dont think any of our rivals would have Maguire on that after having him stay all that time on superstar wages after a failed megamoney move.

Again he is a decent CB. He's not worse than Lisandro or de Ligt, they're all about the same level just have different styles. But being around as good as 2 other CBs in the 11th best defensive record team shouldn't reward you with 150k per week. Only a club who usually make poor financial decisions would do that.
I love how you completely ignore my point about looking at total cost including fees, which of course obliterates your argument. Can't help but laugh.

Martinez came for roughly a £48M fee. Amortized over five years, that's £7.8M a year. With £120k wages (£6M a year), he's costing us £13.8M a year.

On £190k a week with no fee to amortize, Maguire only costs us £9.5M a year. So Licha would cost us almost 50% more, even if we kept Maguire's wages the same. If we got a wage cut, Licha may even cost double.

So please don't talk about costs if you're only talking about wages. And now you know why free transfers can command high wages; their overall cost is still low.

We got a nice deal with Maguire, particularly with a team option for the extra year. £100k- £150k with no fee is very cheap for a good CB, and we take on no long term risk of another busted/expensive transfer. It's really good business.
 
I love how you completely ignore my point about looking at total cost including fees, which of course obliterates your argument. Can't help but laugh.

Martinez came for roughly a £48M fee. Amortized over five years, that's £7.8M a year. With £120k wages (£6M a year), he's costing us £13.8M a year.

On £190k a week with no fee to amortize, Maguire only costs us £9.5M a year. So Licha would cost us almost 50% more, even if we kept Maguire's wages the same. If we got a wage cut, Licha may even cost double.

So please don't talk about costs if you're only talking about wages. And now you know why free transfers can command high wages; their overall cost is still low.

We got a nice deal with Maguire, particularly with a team option for the extra year. £100k- £150k with no fee is very cheap for a good CB, and we take on no long term risk of another busted/expensive transfer. It's really good business.

Yes it'll cost more to buy a new CB and give them a proper wage

And it'll still hurt us less

1) It'd fix some of our wage issues
2) The new CB would surely help us have better than 11th best defensive record
3) The new CB would be here for at least 3-4 seasons. Not 1 season pushing the problem back a year wasting money in the process
 
Yes it'll cost more to buy a new CB and give them a proper wage

And it'll still hurt us less

1) It'd fix some of our wage issues
2) The new CB would surely help us have better than 11th best defensive record
3) The new CB would be here for at least 3-4 seasons. Not 1 season pushing the problem back a year wasting money in the process
You're assuming we even buy the right guy. Half the time or more we don't, and it becomes a huge long term problem for our finances (see: Ugarte, Zirkzee, Onana, Mount, etc).

We know Maguire is a pretty good player. And to get him for, yes I'll say it, cheap and no long term risk is a real win. He gives great coverage for potential injuries to Licha/MDL, and strong defense and aerial ability.

I don't think our goal should be to try to win the Prem next year. It's just not really possible with the state of our roster; too many holes. We should be trying to ensure UCL while building towards the 27-28 and especially 28-29 seasons. I'd try to add an elite midfielder and left sided player this summer, then go for the elite CB and any other emerging hole next summer, with the idea they're all joining Sesko/Amad/Mainoo/Lammens/Cunha/Yoro as prime age players in a couple years.

If we target it well we potentially have 7-8 top guys hitting their prime at the same time. But you can't buy a bunch of £70-100M players at once usually, and we need an elite player, not another De Ligt type at CB.
 
You're assuming we even buy the right guy. Half the time or more we don't, and it becomes a huge long term problem for our finances (see: Ugarte, Zirkzee, Onana, Mount, etc).

We know Maguire is a pretty good player. And to get him for, yes I'll say it, cheap and no long term risk is a real win. He gives great coverage for potential injuries to Licha/MDL, and strong defense and aerial ability.

I don't think our goal should be to try to win the Prem next year. It's just not really possible with the state of our roster; too many holes. We should be trying to ensure UCL while building towards the 27-28 and especially 28-29 seasons. I'd try to add an elite midfielder and left sided player this summer, then go for the elite CB and any other emerging hole next summer, with the idea they're all joining Sesko/Amad/Mainoo/Lammens/Cunha/Yoro as prime age players in a couple years.

If we target it well we potentially have 7-8 top guys hitting their prime at the same time. But you can't buy a bunch of £70-100M players at once usually, and we need an elite player, not another De Ligt type at CB.

If Maguire gives us great coverage then why do we have the 11th best defensive record this season?

I think its much more reasonable to say that since we have that record, all 3 of our CBs have been a bit worse defensively than we'd expect from them. And Maguire isnt a drop off from the other 2. So defensively its a group of 3 CBs that have been quite good, if we're charitable. If we're not being particularly charitable, if we werent fans of this club I think its fair to say they've been average for a top 6 team.

Again I dont think Maguire is any worse than Lisandro or de Ligt. But none of them have been great defensively overall. They've been quite good at certain times but our record is dissappointing for a defence with the 3 of them. Its certainly dissappointing for 2 Cbs on 190k+ and another on 120k. And then the fitness issues on top of that where once again, Maguire has been slightly ahead but still had his own problems with that.

I wasnt for one second suggesting we need to improve our defence to win the league. I think we need to improve our defence to compete to maintain 3rd.

Midfield is an issue but if we only address that and not our defence, I don't see much difference from 12th best defensive record last season and 11th best defensive record this season

Our attack is a good example. The past few seasons we had a terrible scoring record. It took signing 3 expensive players and now we've done much better with our goalscoring record. Taking no action to address the defensive record this summer is sure to bring about similar results as this season and last
 
If Maguire gives us great coverage then why do we have the 11th best defensive record this season?

I think its much more reasonable to say that since we have that record, all 3 of our CBs have been a bit worse defensively than we'd expect from them. And Maguire isnt a drop off from the other 2. So defensively its a group of 3 CBs that have been quite good, if we're charitable. If we're not being particularly charitable, if we werent fans of this club I think its fair to say they've been average for a top 6 team.

Again I dont think Maguire is any worse than Lisandro or de Ligt. But none of them have been great defensively overall. They've been quite good at certain times but our record is dissappointing for a defence with the 3 of them. Its certainly dissappointing for 2 Cbs on 190k+ and another on 120k. And then the fitness issues on top of that where once again, Maguire has been slightly ahead but still had his own problems with that.

I wasnt for one second suggesting we need to improve our defence to win the league. I think we need to improve our defence to compete to maintain 3rd.

Midfield is an issue but if we only address that and not our defence, I don't see much difference from 12th best defensive record last season and 11th best defensive record this season

Our attack is a good example. The past few seasons we had a terrible scoring record. It took signing 3 expensive players and now we've done much better with our goalscoring record. Taking no action to address the defensive record this summer is sure to bring about similar results as this season and last
I agree none of Maguire, De Ligt, and Licha is a truly great player. I think the differences are small enough it's hard to say for certain, but Maguire may be the best when healthy of all three.

I think with the defense, on top of the lack of elite players, there's two problems:

1) midfield isn't very good defensively, especially with Bruno at CM for a big chunk of the season
2) We've been hit hardest hit with injuries in defense this year (MDL, Licha, Maguire, Dorgu, Maz)
3) Yoro isn't very good yet, but he's played >50% of our minutes this year due to the injuries
4) we actually played 6 games with Bayinder in goal

We're actively trying to solve problem #1 in the summer; we'll see how it goes. Problem #2 may be bad luck or it may be how these guys are (and we've been lucky with Shaw this year). Hard to feel great about it given their injury histories.

If we can keep two of MDL/Licha/Maguire healthy together (or Yoro/Heaven improve) and we get a good defensive CM/DM, I think we have a good enough team for a defense in the top 5.

Worth noting we're 4th in xGA this season, so perhaps we've been a bit unlucky as well. Or potentially Amorim's OOP tactics just sucked. :)
 
They dont need to be available for free. They arent 33 so they dont need an immediate replacement. They're worth having on a multi year contract so thats why they're worth signing for a fee.

Maguire is once again wasting money on a sunk cost fallacy. He needs to be a first choice every week and playing way better than our other CBs other than De Ligt to be worth his wages even if hes taken a 60k pay cut which I doubt he has. We're essentially wasting money pushing back a problem to the next season. Our defence has come up short more than our midfield this season, granted thats because Casemiro has come into very good form and we had our best player playing there for a while so clearly we do need a signing for midfield regardless. But I dont believe for one second that any midfielder is going to have much of an effect on our defensive record. Thats going to take a defender.
This summer we'll need 3 CMs, either a LB or LW, and a replacement for Zirkzee and Bayindir when they're sold. That's just to maintain a "2 first team players per position" squad after the inevitable outgoings of Casemiro, Ugarte, Malacia, Zirkzee and Bayindir.

You have to give the club the benefit of the doubt I think that they don't have the finances to buy a top class CB this summer, alongside everything else we already need.

And this is coming from someone who really doesn't like our CB options and thinks our fans overrate them.

Extending Maguire for a year who's transfer fee is effectively fully amortized and paid off vs signing another £60m, £70m player or whatever it will be is still a big financial difference. Clubs sometimes have to push back problems a year to meet short term financial targets and cash flow issues.


The idea of focusing on midfield in the summer instead of defence isn't because midfielders are more likely to improve our defensive record. It's out of pure necessity in terms of numbers. We need 4 midfielders for basic depth, and we'll have just Mainoo on his lonesome in the summer. With centre back, as much as we don't like our options, we at least have 5 of them.
 
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If Maguire gives us great coverage then why do we have the 11th best defensive record this season?

I think its much more reasonable to say that since we have that record, all 3 of our CBs have been a bit worse defensively than we'd expect from them. And Maguire isnt a drop off from the other 2. So defensively its a group of 3 CBs that have been quite good, if we're charitable. If we're not being particularly charitable, if we werent fans of this club I think its fair to say they've been average for a top 6 team.

Again I dont think Maguire is any worse than Lisandro or de Ligt. But none of them have been great defensively overall. They've been quite good at certain times but our record is dissappointing for a defence with the 3 of them. Its certainly dissappointing for 2 Cbs on 190k+ and another on 120k. And then the fitness issues on top of that where once again, Maguire has been slightly ahead but still had his own problems with that.

I wasnt for one second suggesting we need to improve our defence to win the league. I think we need to improve our defence to compete to maintain 3rd.

Midfield is an issue but if we only address that and not our defence, I don't see much difference from 12th best defensive record last season and 11th best defensive record this season

Our attack is a good example. The past few seasons we had a terrible scoring record. It took signing 3 expensive players and now we've done much better with our goalscoring record. Taking no action to address the defensive record this summer is sure to bring about similar results as this season and last
Your opinions on our CBs surprises me here as they are at odds with what I thought they were based on your usual posts.

You only seem to ever speak positively about Martinez, and I'm sure you've said to me the lack of pace in our defence doesn't concern you as it's about positioning, and Martinez's lack of height and strength you seem to play down as a non-issue. To find out you think they're all mediocre is a shock. I assume you think they're all rather average for reasons other than their physical limitations?
 
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Your opinions on our CBs surprises me here as they are at odds with what I thought they were based on your usual posts.

You only seem to ever speak positively about Martinez, and I'm sure you've said to me the lack of pace in our defence doesn't concern you as it's about positioning, and Martinez's lack of height and strength you seem to play down as a non-issue. To find out you think they're all mediocre is a shock. I assume you think they're all rather average for reasons other than their physical limitations?

Its because I'm talking about purely defending. Lisandro has been fantastic with the ball. But how can I say any of our CBs have defended great this season if our record is so bad? It wouldnt make any sense to have that opinion.

When we talk about what hes also done with the ball as well as defending hes been good especially when he hasnt had to play with a youngster next to him. But thats also the case with Maguire, when he was able to have a run next to Lisandro.

My preference would be a new CB who is first and foremost an improvement in defending over our current 3 CBs to partner Lisandro
 
That Greek arrest thing probably got to his head and/or Lindelof pairing was just wrong. Sometimes these off field issues can be very distracting to the player but overlooked by the fans.
The issue in Greece happened at the beginning of his second season. He did have a bad month or two, but he then went on to have his best ever season (the second half of that season was the only time he was genuinely one of the best defenders in the league). We were all hoping that he would continue at that level and prove well-worth the money we paid for him, but unfortunately the exact opposite happened and everything that could go wrong did go wrong in his third season. It is still possible that something related to that was causing issues 14+ months later, but there wasn't a direct link.

He was absolutely atrocious in that third season, and pretty damn bad in his fourth as well. The fact he overcame that and has been quite good again for the last three seasons speaks well for him and hopefully he'll continue like that for the rest of his career (whether that's with us or if he moves somewhere else before retiring).
 
Not a bad idea to sign him for another year as long as he is a backup. Reduced his wages. So overall its not bad. Not exciting but hopefully that allows us to sign a top cb.
 
Good move to me. Hopefully on slightly less wages, but despite all the criticism that he has gotten over the years, he has generally played well for us. And as an experienced head we can call upon to do a good job when needed, he still has a place in our squad for at least the next year or two.
 
He's gone from a meme who was constantly abused to a solid and respected defender who can be relied on. Good on him
 
He'd have had to have been offered and accepted half his wages to make any sense of keeping him an extra year. Unless the article posted is wrong and there were no offers of higher than that, I dont think its reasonable hed stay from his own perspective. He wasnt even first choice going into this season. He's played because other players are injured. We'll probably sign another defender. So he's choosing to stay for half his wages as a 3rd choice? Its what a fan thinks he should do. Not what a player would do for themselves when they are putting themselves and their family first.
Do you think the situation has changed from that start of the season?

There might just be one big change that happened?

He’s a player who has always forced himself back into the team, and now back into the England squad.

Carrick has started him in every game.

Irrelevant what Amorim’s thoughts were at the start of the season. You need to update your analysis to the current situation.

Some really bizarre thought processes on display in your post.

You keep mentioning that United had the 11th best defensive record. I don’t know the answer to this question - but what’s the record:

- with Lammens in goal?
- under Carrick?
 
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With so many holes in midfield to fill giving Maguire a new contract was always the most likely move as when fit and on form he’s one of the most dominant centre backs in the league, very experienced, a good leader, a massive goal threat and will always give 100%.

Yes he’s had a few injury problems as of late but between Maguire, De Ligt, Martinez, Yoro, Heaven, Shaw, Fredricson and Kukonki we’ve got more than enough at centre back to fill two positions now we’re back to being a back four team.

I think the defensive record for this season is often misguided as we’ve played Bayindir, played a ridiculously open back three for half the season, had a horribly open midfield and basically been disjointed so now with Lammens in goal, playing a back four and midfield being our clear focus in the summer we’ll be far better defensively next season.
 
I don’t mind it.

Ultimately at this stage we need to start seeing more from the likes of Yoro who appears to be regressing and Ayden Heaven, so hopefully this is the process of handing over the torch, rather than another year of going back to old habits and relying on Maguire.

If that is the plan, or if we have plans to sign another CB in the pipeline, then it’s clear he’s been retained for his experience and the meet the UEFA squad requirements where we would struggle to comply and be forced to go in with a reduced squad. It’s for that reason I don’t see anything happening with Shaw or Mount either.
 
Yes it'll cost more to buy a new CB and give them a proper wage

And it'll still hurt us less

1) It'd fix some of our wage issues
2) The new CB would surely help us have better than 11th best defensive record
3) The new CB would be here for at least 3-4 seasons. Not 1 season pushing the problem back a year wasting money in the process
Squad planning

Focus on cm this year

Get ‘Arry in for another yr and look to refresh CBs summer 27
 
One position a year is bad planning which is also why we're in the position of having a middle of the table defensive record.


It’s not bad planning if you expect Maguire, De Ligt, Martinez, Yoro, Heaven to manage the season between them with a view to refreshing the following summer. I’d say quite the opposite…that they are at least planning
 
One position a year is bad planning which is also why we're in the position of having a middle of the table defensive record.
We already know we're paying the price for 13 years of dreadful recruitment, wasted money on poor players and injury prone players, Glazers debt and interest, as well as abiding by PSR rules. Our squad is weak almost everywhere for that reason, unless we have a time machine we can't fix that.

It's not ideal that we've left ourselves needing 3 midfielders in one summer, as well as either a LB or LW. But that's the situation we're in. We have finite money to spend.

Complaining about the decision to not sign a CB this summer is strange as if the club purposely want us to have a mediocre defence. The fault lies in the last decade of poor recruitment decisions.
 
I've never been a massive fan, but he's turned into a useful player, and we were realistically always going to renew as it makes sense.
 
Good on club to extend only 1 year. He has been decent for last few games but he always has odd errors in him.
CB is the last place to invest. If all are fit starting should be Yoro/Martinez/De ligt , with Maguire and Shaw as backups

We should invest in CM and RB positions as a priority.
 
Money needs spent on midfield so this decision seems a wise one. That said, he needs to be a squad player next year, not a starter.
 
We already know we're paying the price for 13 years of dreadful recruitment, wasted money on poor players and injury prone players, Glazers debt and interest, as well as abiding by PSR rules. Our squad is weak almost everywhere for that reason, unless we have a time machine we can't fix that.

It's not ideal that we've left ourselves needing 3 midfielders in one summer, as well as either a LB or LW. But that's the situation we're in. We have finite money to spend.

Complaining about the decision to not sign a CB this summer is strange as if the club purposely want us to have a mediocre defence. The fault lies in the last decade of poor recruitment decisions.

Why would it only matter if it was on purpose? Blaming decisions from years ago is a skapegoat. Plenty of clubs resolve multiple positions in one summer without spending like we do.

You're speaking from the perspective of someone used to bad decisions and being accepting of them. The only way for the club to do better is to call them out as they make these bad decisions and hold the club to a higher standard than they are delivering.
 
It’s not bad planning if you expect Maguire, De Ligt, Martinez, Yoro, Heaven to manage the season between them with a view to refreshing the following summer. I’d say quite the opposite…that they are at least planning

So 3 CBs who have been injured too much this season and defensively okay when available and a young CB who has been overall under par... last season the 12th best defensive record, 11th so far this, it'll be the same again
 
Under Carrick?

There are more than 10 games in a premier league season. We dont even know if he'll be the manager next season. We've had a better record in the 10 games, but thats been across the board and over the course of a full season we're more likely to have high points (like now) and low points which will drag our averages down. Almost every team has this. And it will happen under Carrick or another manager, bringing our defensive record more in line with the season rather than 10 games on a good run.
 
An absolute non decision to keep him on next year.
We need to go big on CM so don't want to be spending in defence.
He's the best in the league in the air, we have big doubts on De Ligt and any of the others need a strong aerial player next to them.

Give another year to see if Yoro or Heaven can emerge as a start ever week level or if we need to buy big next summer.
 
So 3 CBs who have been injured too much this season and defensively okay when available and a young CB who has been overall under par... last season the 12th best defensive record, 11th so far this, it'll be the same again

There are more than 10 games in a premier league season. We dont even know if he'll be the manager next season. We've had a better record in the 10 games, but thats been across the board and over the course of a full season we're more likely to have high points (like now) and low points which will drag our averages down. Almost every team has this. And it will happen under Carrick or another manager, bringing our defensive record more in line with the season rather than 10 games on a good run.
You can’t seem to acknowledge that the biggest issue was Amorim (the worst manager in at least 50 years) rather than Maguire.

He’s gone, 5 at the back has gone. We are better defensively without him as manager.
 
An absolute non decision to keep him on next year.
We need to go big on CM so don't want to be spending in defence.
He's the best in the league in the air, we have big doubts on De Ligt and any of the others need a strong aerial player next to them.

Give another year to see if Yoro or Heaven can emerge as a start ever week level or if we need to buy big next summer.

This.
 
You can’t seem to acknowledge that the biggest issue was Amorim (the worst manager in at least 50 years) rather than Maguire.

He’s gone, 5 at the back has gone. We are better defensively without him as manager.

For 10 games we have been. We have no idea what 38 next season will bring, but if its with the same players its unlikely to be completely different. You're living in a dream world.
 
For 10 games we have been. We have no idea what 38 next season will bring, but if it’s with the same players it’s unlikely to be completely different. You're living in a dream world.
Ok. So no change from Amorim.

The change in manager has made a seismic difference. But you can’t acknowledge that.
 
Ok. So no change from Amorim.

The change in manager has made a seismic difference. But you can’t acknowledge that.

He wasnt the manager all of last season. And Carrick has had 10 games and we dont know if hes going to be our manager next season

The players will be the same unless we sign a new CB. They arent going to be dramatically different to their record the past 2 seasons.
 
I don't understand how anyone can be against this. Remember Thiago Silva, being one of the best CBs in the league at 37-38? Maguire just turned 33.

Experience, leadership, aerial ability and physical presence that they both share is invaluable, and it would be an absolutely chaotic decision to let him go. He is still one of the best CBs in the league, ridiculous mental strength (and physical, obviously, manhandling Gabriel like that). Maguire has never relied on pace, and he can keep it up for several more years at this level.
 
For 10 games we have been. We have no idea what 38 next season will bring, but if its with the same players its unlikely to be completely different. You're living in a dream world.
I’m convinced your a wum at this point