Phil Jones | released summer 2023

Status
Not open for further replies.

Jericho

New Member
Newbie
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
1,109
But who would actually buy him at this stage? And for what price? He still had a long contract where he no-doubt earns a huge wage. What are the changes a West Ham / Everton / Leeds would pay about 15 million pounds for him, and more important.. What are the changes he can strike a wage deal with them, given what he still earns here with some contract time to go...
I'd be very surprised if anyone bought him. Maybe someone would pick him up in the same way we did with Michael Owen. That's the point he seems to be at in his career now.
 

MrSingh2002

New Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2013
Messages
4,408
At this stage all we can do is pay out his contract to stop him taking up resources and being at the training ground.

No club are going to take his wages on or any liability for fitness.

Extending his deal by 4 years was THE biggest contract blunder I've seen at United.

We just need to accept it that he will be here for 2 years until he retires or will try and resurrect his career at the end of his contract in some obscure Turkish team or League one club. It is what it is.
 

KikiDaKats

Full Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2015
Messages
2,607
Location
Salford
Supports
His Liverpool supporting wife
Besides De Gea and Jones there is a third player that that played for SAF and is still playing for us. Care to guess who it is? :D
Yeah Pogba had a few appearance. Not sure I'd class that much as a part of the team, same with Heaton, Lingard and Mcshane.
 

swedishgloryhunter

Full Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2016
Messages
501
Location
Sweden/Sölvesborg
I hope for his sake he gets rid of these injuries and can atleast play majority of the games a season. A wonderfull plottwist would be him becoming the dm we want, however it's fools dream. Has there been any reports on what he could have done differently to have had less injuries?
 

Red Shorts

Forrest Gimp
Joined
Jan 2, 2013
Messages
12,423
Location
Location, Location
Very trusting of the club to give him an extension when we did, but by god was it the worst timing.

Has been extremely unfortunate with injuries, and he deserves to get a couple more years of football, perhaps with the newly promoted sides.
 

8thWonder

Full Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2009
Messages
1,346
Hindsight doesn't come into the equation. I remember most people being very surprised that he got that contract at the time.
That was exactly my point. It doesn't matter what people thought at the time outside of the club, the club made an informed decision, based off multiple factors. Hindsight shouldn't be used in the argument to prove any point about who was right or wrong in my opinion.

My issue was slightly to do with people saying he shouldn't have been given a contract full stop. Having an issue with the length, I get, but offering him one at the time made sense to me at least.

I'd be very surprised if anyone bought him. Maybe someone would pick him up in the same way we did with Michael Owen. That's the point he seems to be at in his career now.
It's a gamble for any club in a severly depressed market so I can't see it either to be honest.

At best, a loan with us paying his wages, which if we can't sell then I think that would be perfect for both player and club. With Varane and Maguire here, he wouldn't be able to prove his fitness anyway because he's not going to play much. If he goes to a Newcastle for example and does well there and stays fit then I think we'd happily take him back as a 3rd/4th choice or have a value for him next summer.
 

Sandikan

aka sex on the beach
Joined
Mar 14, 2011
Messages
52,711
That was exactly my point. It doesn't matter what people thought at the time outside of the club, the club made an informed decision, based off multiple factors. Hindsight shouldn't be used in the argument to prove any point about who was right or wrong in my opinion.

My issue was slightly to do with people saying he shouldn't have been given a contract full stop. Having an issue with the length, I get, but offering him one at the time made sense to me at least.



It's a gamble for any club in a severly depressed market so I can't see it either to be honest.

At best, a loan with us paying his wages, which if we can't sell then I think that would be perfect for both player and club. With Varane and Maguire here, he wouldn't be able to prove his fitness anyway because he's not going to play much. If he goes to a Newcastle for example and does well there and stays fit then I think we'd happily take him back as a 3rd/4th choice or have a value for him next summer.
We have lindelof, Bailly and Tuanzebe ahead of him, so he's 6th choice.
 

Bebestation

Im a doctor btw, my IQ destroys yours
Joined
Oct 9, 2019
Messages
11,862
Wonder if players like this get more injury prone from playing less and less aswell.

It's kind of happening to Bailly right? He wasn't the most injury prone I've ever seen - then he plays less and less with an injury happening after every couple of games.
 

lex talionis

Full Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2017
Messages
13,615
If there is such a thing in this universe as a fit Phil Jones, I’d have him ahead of Bailly, who’s no pillar of consistent fitness himself. But the question really is, after all these years of being sidelined does Jones have enough muscle memory, for lack of a better term, in him?
 

Nytram Shakes

cannot lust
Joined
Feb 2, 2014
Messages
5,266
Location
Auckland
Extending his deal by 4 years was THE biggest contract blunder I've seen at United
No, it’s frustratingly but it’s isn’t a patch on the Sanchez contract.
Paying between somewhere near 10 million to get him to leave. Paying him more than 5 million to play for another for a year. And we are still paying for it as it has raised the wage expectations of every player we negotiate with.
Nothing compares to how bad that contract was. And the fact that most fans on here and pundits called it a bargain at the time still makes my blood boil.
 

lysglimt

Full Member
Scout
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
15,108
Extending his deal by 4 years was THE biggest contract blunder I've seen at United.

We just need to accept it that he will be here for 2 years until he retires or will try and resurrect his career at the end of his contract in some obscure Turkish team or League one club. It is what it is.
Of course it wasn't - not with the wages he is on.
 

ForlansHair

Full Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2012
Messages
752
Location
Combing Diego's beautiful golden locks
I would keep him as 5th choice regardless of whether he is 'unsellable' and loan out Tuanzebe, who needs the game time both for his and our long term benefit more than trying to generate a few quid for Jones. We'd have to replace Jones if we let both go and we need the money for other areas. The 5th choice centre back is almost like 3rd choice GK, in that he won't make the bench most weeks and only step in if absolutely required which is the perfect role for him (if he is able to stay fit - big if). There is absolutely no point in paying up his contract at this point or even us paying his wages for him to go loan.
 

Tallis

Full Member
Joined
Dec 23, 2020
Messages
982
We should find some employment for him at the club which doesn’t require use of legs. Maybe making Twitter posts on behalf of the club ? That’s the best way to recover some of the wages we are loosing on him. He can do that job from the hospital bed and we can fire whoever is doing the job now and save some money
 

lefty_jakobz

I ❤️ moses
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
3,648
Send him on loan to a lower EPL team for 6 months to get back to match fitness and see if theres any takers for him.
 

roseguy64

Full Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2010
Messages
12,172
Location
Jamaica
We'll probably keep him at the club for the first half of the season then try to loan him out or sell in January.
 

SAFMUTD

New Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2018
Messages
11,787
Anyone thinking we might actually sell him is crazy, at this point the best we can do is loan him and pay a big chunk of his wages. Hopefully he can make an impression on the other team and we may ship him there.

Pretty much an Alexis Sanchez scenario.
 

RopersReturn

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Dec 17, 2020
Messages
2,120
Location
Hastings
I wouldn’t be too surprised if Jones ends up playing abroad for a season, maybe in Ligue 1 or with a less successful team in Italy like Genoa or Torino.
 

choccy77

New Member
Joined
Jul 8, 2008
Messages
6,059
Reading article today, saying Jones want's to do a Luke Shaw and turn it around at United.

I nearly cried.
 

Max_United

Full Member
Joined
Jul 11, 2013
Messages
235
That was exactly my point. It doesn't matter what people thought at the time outside of the club, the club made an informed decision, based off multiple factors. Hindsight shouldn't be used in the argument to prove any point about who was right or wrong in my opinion.

My issue was slightly to do with people saying he shouldn't have been given a contract full stop. Having an issue with the length, I get, but offering him one at the time made sense to me at least.



It's a gamble for any club in a severly depressed market so I can't see it either to be honest.

At best, a loan with us paying his wages, which if we can't sell then I think that would be perfect for both player and club. With Varane and Maguire here, he wouldn't be able to prove his fitness anyway because he's not going to play much. If he goes to a Newcastle for example and does well there and stays fit then I think we'd happily take him back as a 3rd/4th choice or have a value for him next summer.
I think the length of the contract was precisely the issue. Had he singed e.g. a 2+1/2+2 deal with automatic prolongation based on appearances or something like that we would not be having this conversation now.

At the time he was not quite the subject of jokes he is now but still was playing less than half of our matches and his injury problems were very well-known. If we thought he would be a useful squad player nontheless/wanted to protect his value/etc (all the other arguments in favor of giving him new contract) this would all be perfectly accomplished with a shorter term contract, which I would myself not have a problem with. And it is not like he would have kicked a fuss about getting only a shorter deal. I mean we started offering even Giggs and Scholes only 1 year deals at some point.

I really failed to see any argumentation for such a long deal at the time beyond a romantic "show of support", but we are not a charity. And this was unfortunately not an isolated incident which is even more puzzling given that was done a year after we gave Rojo a new bumper contract - and he played a grand total of 5 premier leagues matches in the season after signing (and we gave Rojo only 3+1 contract, so we have not learned from that, but rather doubled down with Jones 4+1 contract!).

Now we are also having trouble shifting Pereira due to giving him 4-year contract when he was a fringe player after a not great Valencia loan spell, but at least at the time you could make "protect the value" argument as he was young, not injury prone and not on huge wages. With Jones on the other hand it is just mind boggling and was already mind-boggling even at the time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sultan

buchansleftleg

Full Member
Joined
Aug 27, 2014
Messages
3,704
Location
Dublin, formerly Manchester
Is the whole thing about wanting to hold onto the number 4 shirt rather than give it to Varane actually true or just papers making stuff up?

It seems too bizarre to be true to me. Surely he can't still consider himself to be in contention to bolt down a permanent place in the starting 11?

It's not as if there are a load of "treasured memories" of him in the number 4 shirt either. I can see that keeping a player within the squad is an important thing to do to support their mental health but this seems too weird to me.
 

Matriac

Full Member
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
Messages
1,478
Is the whole thing about wanting to hold onto the number 4 shirt rather than give it to Varane actually true or just papers making stuff up?

It seems too bizarre to be true to me. Surely he can't still consider himself to be in contention to bolt down a permanent place in the starting 11?

It's not as if there are a load of "treasured memories" of him in the number 4 shirt either. I can see that keeping a player within the squad is an important thing to do to support their mental health but this seems too weird to me.
My bet is that it's only papertalk.

More likely is Varane asked which numbers were available, and picked one of them. Had he been offered 4 he probably would have taken it. But I doubt he's the kind of person that wants to take the number off a player when he's just coming into the team. Doesn't seem to have the same ego as Zlatan does.
 

golden_blunder

Site admin. Manchester United fan
Staff
Joined
Jun 1, 2000
Messages
119,444
Location
Dublin, Ireland
If there is such a thing in this universe as a fit Phil Jones, I’d have him ahead of Bailly, who’s no pillar of consistent fitness himself. But the question really is, after all these years of being sidelined does Jones have enough muscle memory, for lack of a better term, in him?
Woohoo found the 2nd one! I said the same as you and someone said I must be the only one on the entire support that thinks that way
 

stevoc

Full Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2011
Messages
19,836
Is the whole thing about wanting to hold onto the number 4 shirt rather than give it to Varane actually true or just papers making stuff up?

It seems too bizarre to be true to me. Surely he can't still consider himself to be in contention to bolt down a permanent place in the starting 11?

It's not as if there are a load of "treasured memories" of him in the number 4 shirt either. I can see that keeping a player within the squad is an important thing to do to support their mental health but this seems too weird to me.
Don't think Solskjaer has ever asked players to give up their numbers. Mourinho loved that shit though.
 
Last edited:

choccy77

New Member
Joined
Jul 8, 2008
Messages
6,059
Hardly a shock.

£100,000 a week and a body as durable as a butterfly's wing. He's here until 2024 with a League Cup appearance or 3 being his only game time for the next few years.
They can't even give him away for free as they would have to pay up his contract.

Jones is already enjoying his retirement pension by staying and seeing out his contract.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.