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People have not given up on him because they believe he is too old. People who don’t like him believe he has underperformed most of the time the last eight years. And to give someone the chance for eight years in one of the worlds largest clubs, is not “to have already given up on him”. Would say it is the opposite.
I mean, no it isn't.
This is factually untrue - £100k a week is still a huge salary for all but maybe 15 clubs on the planet. Spurs for example only have two players who're on this kind of salary in Kane and Lloris. Likewise it would make him one of the highest paid players at clubs like Dortmund or A.Madrid.
The point is in two years time and on £100k a week we'd struggle to get £10m for a 29 year old, injury prone Phil Jones. Simply because he'd be looking for at least a 4 year deal on at least the same salary. You'd have to be an absolute nutcase in this context to make Phil Jones one of your highest paid players... Not least because every other player would be knocking on your door asking for at least the same.
Jones transfer value is possibly £10-15m given his current salary, injury record and age. If you can give me an example of a defender of a similar ability and age to Phil Jones moving clubs at anything close to a £65m package then I'll cede the point. The truth is there is none. Similar players who're mid table quality but on a large salary like Jonny Evans moved to Leicester for a £3.5m.
It'd be an absolutely terrible deal at £20m as the package would be £45m which is a huge package for a mid table centre back (assuming you agree the top 6 wouldn't be interested).
I hope and think we will sign Koulibaly in the summer. This is where we disagree though.
It might have been two-three years ago. Not anymore. You cant compare the wages that Spurs players are on when those contracts were signed years ago. Watch Spurs losing Eriksen, Aldeweireld and maybe even Vertonghen this summer because of this; and still be forced to at least increase their wage bill with 50% to replace them. You cannot compare players on old contracts with todays market and 100k is not and will not be a big salary for a PL-club going forward because of the TV-money.
How many more times do we have to read "if he can stay injury free"?!? He can't stay injury free ffs
Wish i had a £ for every time thats been written on the Caf about Jones since 2011.
I'll back you up here. His injury history is just mental.
Jones isn't reliable enough to be 4th or 5th choice. If we had say Koulibaly, Lindelof & Smalling as our first choices... If two of those were injured the chances are Jones would be out at the same time so he absolutely could never be a backup option. Therefore any cost incurred by having Jones on the books is a dead cost.
The closest player to Jones I've seen these last few years in Jonny Evans literally left this Summer for £3.5m. The market has changed dramatically for top end players like Erikson and Alderweireld but it hasn't changed drastically at the bottom end where Jones would be marketing himself. Huddersfield, Newcastle, Cardiff, Brighton, Watford etc aren't paying anyone £100k a week and if they were they'd be looking for a player they would see as an absolute game changer (see Palace and Benteke).
Terrible comparison. Evans hade a release clause when West Brom got relegated. His estimated market value was around 15m according to Transfermarkt. Which kind of proves my point since he is 4 years older than Jones as well.
Its mental mostly because of the fact that he has never had a real long-term injury and still missed that amount of games in total.I'll back you up here. His injury history is just mental.
Source
119 games or 662 days missed due to injury!
Its not about luck. If a player constantly injures himself, he is either built weakly, has trained in a poor way or plays very recklessly.
Via keeping mediocre players, you could only get mediocre results at best. Perhaps based on performance Young could stay as cover for one more season (unless we sign a new full back), but the likes of Valencia, Rojo and Jones should most certainly leave or be sold. Then, especially if some others like Fellaini and McTominay are also off, there will be room for new and better players, as well as for best academy talent.
He has missed 18 games this season and the last one.
Yeah, it's a shame Alderweireld isn't playing yet for us, otherwise those stats wouldn't be completely pointless since this is Phil Jones thread.
Since he is one of the most hyped to "replace" Jones its quite relevant I think. No one is calling him injury prone. But we love to beat on our own players with a stick.
We could easily lose 4 of those without too much disruption, i'd keep Young and shift the other 4. Rojo and Jones basically only count as one player anyway seeing as they both keep getting themselves injured. So we'd really only be losing 3 players, Darmian has barely played the last 2 seasons so he will be no great loss to squad depth. Same with Valencia he's barely played this season and is pretty much done at the top level. Our defence could look something like this.
Hybrid turf is the most advanced pitch system in world at the moment. The artificial fibers only covers 3% of the whole pitch. The use of the AF is to solidify the grass to the ground which makes it harder to deteriorate.
David May is a title winning centre back, he's actually won more than Jones. So i'm not sure what relevance that has, especially as Jones only started 14 league games the season he won the League. Not far above the bare minimum number of games to qualify for a medal.
Some criminal underrating of Jones on this forum. The current market is stupid and we've had more hits than misses, you can only really say that Lindelof has been our only successful acquisition, and he's only just started repaying his transfer fee but yeah, whatever, lets start playing football manager and getting rid of players who are still at a good age and generally play their best football (in said position) around their 30's and replace them with completely unknown quantities in an inflated market.
I don't think i'm underrating him at all, i've not said he isn't a good defender at times when fit. But even if i rated him more highly than i do, i still think he should be be moved on due to his complete inability to stay fit for more than 6-12 weeks at a time. In that regard Jones is a known quantity, we know that he's unreliable.
What does this have to do with my last post in reply to you? What do i have a short memory about?
Most teams have an injury crisis of some sort most seasons. But over the last 8 years United seem to have an almost annual defensive injury crisis. This isn't all Jones fault of course, but if we happen to have 2-3 or other defenders injured or suspended at any given time. Then you can almost guarantee Phil will be injured at the same time often forcing us to play midfielders in defence. He's a horrible back-up who can't stay fit for any stretch of time, thats the reality of this situation.
Could be that or he just has an injury prone body or he's not as thorough as he should be with his stretching/warm up setc. Or it could be a combination of all of those things.
But we have seen Jones for eight years, and we have also seen other defenders. He is far off the level required to be a Man Utd player, unfortunately. The problem of the team in recent years was an abundance of average players - perhaps it explains in part lack of results too. With Jones, he is not just average, but also extremely injury prone. Why should we want him to stay? Even in inflated market, it is better to acquire expensive but better players - especially for a position that is by far the most critical for the club currently.
Yea so awful he made Dalot stand the wrong side and Lindelof get mugged off so hard he stood and watched a conpletely unpressured ball be put into the box.
