The very fact that such a thread even exists and also getting traction is a sad indictment of how far United have fallen .
Selling Fred was a mistake
- Thread starter Idxomer
- Start date
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
McTominay doesnt want to leave. Neither does Macguire.
We can accept any offer, but its useless unless the player agrees to move.
Players dont take pay cuts. Fred will be doing just fine at Fenerbahce.
Well that is a different topic.
Lets at least see how Ten Hag plans to use him.
Feels like a strange one now, but not writing it off just yet.
Not long before we have a similar thread about Rojo.
For a contract extension into their 30's, some do.
Pretty sure that wasn’t the plan was it
Nah I think getting him in for a preseason with our players/tactics and be available for difficult games would of been a better plan than a last ditch loan deal like
It seems all these lean years Post Sir Alex's Retirement have made United's fanbase bit more acceptable of mediocrity .
His replacement hasn't even played yet. Weird thread
Yup, it feels like the days when my Liverpool mates were arguing about the usefulness of Jonjo Shelvey in their team. Funnily, i took a glance at his present status, and he's also in Turkey, age 31.
Very silly thread....literally brought in 2 midfielders and promoted 1 in Mainoo....if anything this highlights just how crazy our injuries are right now.
If anything United sold too few midfielders. Fred was the obvious choice as he was in his last year of contract and at 30 y.o. Scott was the second one as his market value had peaked thanks to his NT appearances and wasn't getting more minutes under Ten Hag, but United somehow rejected a 30M offer (this could have meant, at the very least, securing Amrabat earlier).
The third one was VDB but that was a tough sell as he's still injured, so sending him on loan (as he's still young and could get better enough to be either a squad option or a decente value sale) would have been the smart choice. Then you would have got 3 out (McFred+DVB) and 4 in (Mount, Amrabat, Mainoo and Mejbri). The problem is, 3 of those 4 are injured and the other one isn't trusted enough by ETH so the midfield options are limited to Case-Eriksen-Bruno with McTominay as the first sub. This should solve itself soon.
The third one was VDB but that was a tough sell as he's still injured, so sending him on loan (as he's still young and could get better enough to be either a squad option or a decente value sale) would have been the smart choice. Then you would have got 3 out (McFred+DVB) and 4 in (Mount, Amrabat, Mainoo and Mejbri). The problem is, 3 of those 4 are injured and the other one isn't trusted enough by ETH so the midfield options are limited to Case-Eriksen-Bruno with McTominay as the first sub. This should solve itself soon.
He will be on just as much at Fenerbahce, on a longer deal and the opportunity to start each week. No brainer for him.
I am talking from a tactical POV mate. We now have 4 natural no 10s (Bruno, mount, eriksen and vdb), one of whom is the captain. In my opinion we should have gone for a more hardworking deep lying playmaker who can play as DM. We are trying to shoehorn a no 10 in the dlp role instead.
De Gea yes, Henderson not so much.
He is injured anyway, so kind of a mute point. He would have been injured today regardless of when he signed.
Ten Hag and the club prioritized their signings - Mount, Onana and Hojland. And even then we had to sell to afford them.
Remember, Amrabat is on loan because we didnt have the FFP room to pay for him this year. If we had gone for him at the start of the window, Fiorentina wouldn't have been so accommodating. They only allowed the loan to buy because Amrabat sat out for a month and basically threw his toys out the pram to get the move. I would suggest he was encouraged to do that by United, knowing that we needed the deal on our terms.
I agree that United should have accepted the reported double bid from WHU for McT and Maguire.
But there is no guarentte that McT would have signed for West Ham. We know he turned down Fulham, which caused the Palhinha to Bayern move to collapse.
We have a surplus of midfielders now. Bruno, Mount, Eriksen, Casemiro, Mainoo, McTominay and Amrabat. We've also got Hannibal who's stayed instead of gone out on loan. Fred's minutes going to Mainoo and Hannibal is much better.
He had years of making tonnes of errors though, was on an outrageously ludicrous contract, and had a bizarre lack of ability to pass the ball, which these days is a huge handicap.
If ever you're in doubt about Henderson, re-watch that goal he conceded against Salah at Old Trafford.
Where his positioning was arguably the worst ever seen by a premier league goalie.
Standing almost closer to the corner flag than the middle of his goal, and just letting Salah cruise in and side foot it in without any difficulty at all.
This.
This thread is just proof people are impatient. The replacements haven't even played yet.
Fred was one of many, most of which are still at the club, who aren't good enough. We'd still be in this shit show with him.
The mistake was selling him and not getting anyone until the last day of the window. And he’s not even healthy to play yet. When other serious teams have two-three quality options in that position, we can barely field one.
same idea as the ddg posts. It wasnt wrong to sell the player just hasnt panned out with who we brought in to replace that player yet. Onana struggling a bit at the moment and our midfielders are all injured right now. Doesnt magically change the fact that we needed to move on from fred/ddg
Exactly. It’s like people saying ‘We shouldn’t have sold de Gea as Heaton isn’t good enough’ before we bought Onana. Ridiculous
You can see how some of the fanbase has lowered expectation if they think selling Fred was a mistake. He was shit 95% of the time and once Amrabat is fit you will see a big difference to our midfield. There was probably a hundred better midfielders we could have bought in the summer for the money we paid for him years ago.
'Smart' ??
See how diverse opinions are.
Just made 2 assists in a few minutes in the Conference League. What a player!
Uh, yes. You think we should've held on to him for another four years at enormous wages? Because those were the agreed terms.
100%
the very weird fred fan club having withdrawal symptoms. never ever was good enough thank God he's away. you guys that think this need to support Fulham
This is the Correct opinion
I hear you, but ETH must have a clear plan for him. Maybe he sees him more as box to box, but he was his priority signing for a reason. The criticism of the Mount signing is crazy - people can't wait pile on. We need to give the guy a chance.
Completly agree. SOme work colleagues who are West Ham fans seemed to like Fred and were baffled of my constant criticism of him. Personally never understood why anybody would think he was anything other than an awful signing here.
Lkke you say its weird to me too the "we should have sold Mctominay instead" tpe responses.....we shold have sold all three you mention, bar a handful of great performances and a couple of spells of decent performances, they have all bene nowhere good enough in several seasons two of them as well.
ALso as others have said, how can people say it was a msitke selliing thread...when Arambat hasnt even played, Mainoo has been injured, Hannibal is just gettign chances, Mount has only played twice....its only a mistake if none of them fail to prove to be an improvement on Fred. I am not excited abotu the two we signed, one is average one is not the right player for where we want him to play....but we need to judge that over a season not when they havent even played....and for me even if they are jsut average as I expect....that would personally be an improvment on fred anyway
In my opinion the plan is to have him converted to a B2B/deep lying playmaker the same he did with Eriksen and which worked to a certain extent. Call me old fashioned but I don't like to see us pay huge money so we can try to put a square peg in a round hole.
We've just been unlucky with Mainoo and Mount injuries.
Even so, I'd rather play Hannibal than Fred.
Arguably our 3 best results last season were Spurs, Barcelona and City at home. Fred was man of match in all of them.
Fred one amazing game, 5 awful. It was not a mistake to get rid of him. The bar is that low, threads like this exist. We should have got rid of Scott too, he's rubbish. Doesn't mean Fred should have stayed.
Why don't you wait to see how both Amrabat and Mainoo get on before labelling it a mistake. Still have no clue how selling Fred and bringing in Mount, Amrabat, promoting Mainoo (who looked very good in the 6/8 role in pre-season) as well as keeping Hannibal is seen as not replacing Fred.. . honestly starting to feel like people are moaning just for the sake of moaning now.
Selling him was never a problem, but he obviously needed to be replaced adequately. The options the manager has decided are better are currently injured, so its hard to judge if the job has been done successfully.