Good point BIG Ron.What's wrong with wanting more bang for your buck???
Ratcliffe austerity?
- Thread starter sixdwarf
- Start date
Jesus Christ lad. Read it all. There’s context.
- United are unequivocally the dumb money on the end of every deal.
- We pay too much, when we’re not competing with anyone for signatures.
Nobody else was offering the money for Onana that we were.
Are you honestly suggesting that paying £44m for a player new to the league, is a better bet than a £3m loan fee for a PL proven keeper that’s among the best in the league for everything we’re looking for?
It was a fecking insane decision and was dumb. It’s endemic in our club. We had no canny people doing smart things. That’s dumb money.
To close… I think Onana is a better keeper that Raya. But he’s paid 5x more. We paid £41m more to find out if he’d work here. He had AFCON commitments (admittedly we MAY not have know ). And… Arsenal are comfortably in the top 3 for a £3m outlay. His signing was not bad. He’s a great keeper. But it was properly nutty to spend £44m instead of £3m + a potential £27m to secure a ballplaying keeper.
You’ll be proven 100% correct if he stays for a decade and we win a PL/CL. But a team better ran than us, solved the problem cheaper. That’s evidence of being dumb.
It’s rammed home by the fact that he’s an EtH guy. If the new manager doesn’t rate him or want what he has… he’s Kepa, or any of the other keepers Chelsea have doubled a small fortune on.
Honestly, two things can be true at the same time. He is brilliant. But it wasn’t a smart way to fill that position, considering the state we are in.
If he can show the same intensity in defending in his next few cameos I think he’ll be sticking around. The last game was obviously hard to draw any conclusions from
I wouldn't mind a couple of seasons of very minimal transfer activity. United have been so clueless at transfers in the post-Ferguson era. We need a massive review of all the data, not just United's but other PL teams, other big sides across Europe, in order to get a basic understanding of transfers. Our whole model is flawed on so many different levels.
I would suggest those in charge make sure to read Pay As You Play by Paul Tomkins and Graeme Riley, as soon as possible then try to find more up to date data on transfers.
And please could we fire whoever thought buying a bunch of Eredivisie players was a sensible idea. Likewise buying lightweight creative players from Dortmund; first didn't work, 2nd didn't either so let's try again, 3rd time total disaster.
When Paul Tomkins and Graeme Riley did their big research study into transfers, high priced transfers had the same 50% success rate as lower to medium priced transfers. I haven't looked carefully at all the more recent high priced transfers across the PL but it feels as though the success rate probably hasn't changed much.
Please could we stop paying top end fee and huge salary then using that particular player in a different role than the one he impressed in for his previous team. Mason Mount as a number 8 is someone who will have to learn the role. He is not worth £55m transfer fee and wages of £240K per week when starting regularly in that role. He might be worth £150K per week as a number 8 but he would never have joined us if that was all we were prepared to pay him. As things stand, he is more likely a back-up or squad player being paid a huge salary.
As someone who read the book a long time ago, I despair at United's transfer policy.
I would suggest those in charge make sure to read Pay As You Play by Paul Tomkins and Graeme Riley, as soon as possible then try to find more up to date data on transfers.
And please could we fire whoever thought buying a bunch of Eredivisie players was a sensible idea. Likewise buying lightweight creative players from Dortmund; first didn't work, 2nd didn't either so let's try again, 3rd time total disaster.
When Paul Tomkins and Graeme Riley did their big research study into transfers, high priced transfers had the same 50% success rate as lower to medium priced transfers. I haven't looked carefully at all the more recent high priced transfers across the PL but it feels as though the success rate probably hasn't changed much.
Please could we stop paying top end fee and huge salary then using that particular player in a different role than the one he impressed in for his previous team. Mason Mount as a number 8 is someone who will have to learn the role. He is not worth £55m transfer fee and wages of £240K per week when starting regularly in that role. He might be worth £150K per week as a number 8 but he would never have joined us if that was all we were prepared to pay him. As things stand, he is more likely a back-up or squad player being paid a huge salary.
As someone who read the book a long time ago, I despair at United's transfer policy.
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Maybe they completely forgot he recently signed for Real Madrid, thus making him impossible to get
Honestly, what a weird questionHow many times do I have to state that the Raya deal unquestionably the BETTER VALUE deal for Arsenal, than Onana was for United? This is like the third time I'm typing this out, it's frustrating that you don't seem to comprehend what I'm saying. Both of us are in agreement regarding this.
The part where I disagree with you is you saying Onana was "dumb money", because it could very well turn out to be a shrewd deal as well. Just because it wasn't an absolute no-brainer, like Raya, it doesn't make it dumb money.
We are also not the dumb money "on the end of every deal", like you suggest. We've overpaid sometimes, but the wage bill is the bigger issue here. 2 years ago, when ten Hag arrived, we had Ronaldo, Casemiro, Varane, De Gea and Sancho all earning more than 300k per week each, and none of them really deserved/deserve it. They only got those astronomical wages due to their reputation for what they've done pre-United (except DDG), and not for their current ability and the value they add to the squad.
I'd also argue that the only time(s) we got absolutely fleeced was with Antony, (and to a lesser extent, Casemiro) where we paid, in my opinion, more than 3 times his real market value. I'm interested to hear which arrivals in the last 4-5 years you think was absolutely awful value-wise.
I see what you did there - amazing.. =)
I genuinely think ETH is really good with young players and that's another reason why we should keep him.
He is. He has brought all the decent young players along nice and steady.
Well except Sancho
True!
Sancho was the author of his own demise. He wasn’t even as bad for us as people were making out. Statistically the season before he went to Holland he was getting a goal or assist per 90 at the same rate as nearly everyone else in the squad. Comparable to many others in his position at other clubs. Given his talent It pointed towards him possibly having a breakout year the following season and he looked really good and sharp in preseason… it seems like he took his foot off the gas after he didn’t start the first few games when it was probably a case of the manager demanding much more intensity from him if he wanted to be more than a squad player and the rest is history. It’s a pity. He’s a talented lad and every good squad needs competition. Hopefully Amad keeps pushing hard as it raises the floor in that position
Didn't PSG sign Mbappe for a ridiculous fee when he was 18? The next Mbappe is going to cost an absolute fortune unless he has a low buy out or his contract runs out. This idea that we get an 18 year old for 20 mill that turns out to be as good as Mbappe is just nonsense. Signing Mbappe right now on a free won't be that much more since the next superstar striker will easily be 120 mill plus
We could have had Haaland for £20m if we'd had our shit together. It's reasonable that the next Mbappe isn't going to have had his dad kicked by Roy Keane (well... more reasonable anyway) either, which decomplicates matters.
Something he doesn't get too much credit for, especially in the media.
Coulda woulda shoulda. At the end of the day we never got him and the odds of us getting a world class striker for peanuts is miniscule. That's just a fact
Not really relevant. Ratcliffe never said or implied it was easy. That's what good football clubs do, they beat the odds. On and off the pitch.
Woodward signed stars such as Di Maria, Falcao and Pogba. What we did achieve?