The United way during Ole's time
Many see SAF’s united way as a one constant strategy that never changed through time. I disagree. SAF of the early and mid-years was a different beast to the cautious SAF of the latter years who built his strategy around 3-4 ageing stars with the rest providing the leg work.
Now Ole stayed with us from 1996 till 2007. What’s sort of United’s way was he introduced to?
Between 1996 and 2007 we signed 52 players. Out of those 52 only 14 were British or Irish ( Coton, Sheringham , Greening, Carroll, Richardson, Ferdinand, Steele, Martin, Alan Smith, Miller, Rooney, Foster, Carrick, Hargreaves). Out of those 14 just 4 players were an outstanding success (Rooney, Carrick, Rio and Teddy) which means a global success rate of 7.65%. Some might want to add Hargreaves to the list. However, I don’t think that someone whom we paid good money for and who gave us just 1 season can be added here.
On the other hand we had 38 foreign players who weren’t British. Out of those 38 we had 13 who were an outstanding success ( Van Del Gouw, Johnsen, Ole, Stam, Yorke, Van Nistelrooy, Ronaldo, Saha, Vidic, Evra, VDS, Park and Tevez). That’s a staggering 25%. Some might add Blomqvist and Heinze to that list as well. I felt it wouldn’t be fair since the former got injured after a season and the latter, well, he was Heinze.
What’s truly amazing the absence of big name signings in that list. An optimistic approach would say 8 (Stam, Barthez, RVN, Veron, Ferdinand, Rooney, Hargreaves and Tevez). However I understand (since I share that same opinion) those who contest that by saying that the likes of Stam, RVN, Ferdinand and Rooney were bought mainly because because of their potential and were not big name signings at PSV, Leeds and Everton respectively
Having analysed the list you notice a strong trend towards young players (<26) and players coming from smaller leagues (Holland, Portugal, Belgium, Russia, Norway or the English lower leagues). We were incredibly successful in buying Dutch based leagues (RVN, Stam, Park, Rai Van Del Gouw)
Ole’s signings at Cardiff
Ole signed a staggering 17 signings (Magnus Wolff Eikrem, Mats Moller Daehli, Wilfried Zaha, Juan Cala, Kenwyne Jones, Fabio, Jo Inge Berget, Guido Burgstaller, Adam Le Fondre, Kagisho Dikgacoi , Javi Guerra, Federico Macheda, Tom Adeyemi, Sean Morrison, Anthony Pilkington, Bruno Manga, Danny Gabbidon). I tried to find data about his time at Molde but I failed on that regard. Having said that, a poster in here said that he was quite active on the transfer market at Molde as well.
Anyway basing ourselves on his time at Cardiff we can see similarities between SAF (Ole's period) and Ole. Similarly to SAF during Ole’s period most of Ole’s signings at Cardiff were not British and they were also <26 years signings
So what to expect?
If we base our opinion on this data then we can expect a lot of transfer activity. Ole will be targeting young players with potential, who provide value and therefore we won’t break the bank. That means we’ll probably be targeting leagues such as France, Holland and Germany + the lower English leagues. I think there's a bigger chance of us signing the likes of Lozano and Bergwijn then breaking the bank for Rice, Dybala and Jadon (unless of course he can get them on a realistic fee)
Meanwhile we can expect Ole to base himself heavily on our youth academy whom he rate highly (Eikrem, Daehli, Fabio and Macheda were all our youths)
