Sofyan Amrabat | signs for United on loan

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IamBurnsey

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This whole transfer window and this transfer in particular really just shows were the club is at with these current owners, but anyway hopefully something positive does happen with him if he does come in.
 

Lyng

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Relying on stats without understanding context is a terrible way to judge players.

You are right in your assessment.
What I have seen of him the stats match the eye test. But I havent watched many matches with him and since you say you have watched him a lot, I would love to hear that context.
Honestly I was extremely surprised when I heard we where in for him, so would love to get it cleared up.
 

MadMike

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The "De Jong" saga of this summer, just kinda in the opposite direction. Player wants and waits to join, ETH apparently wants to bring him in, but there is no bid nor agreement between the clubs. Feel a bit sorry for the guy(and ETH as well), because ETH probably made him a false promise and the club hierarchy sabotaged him in bringing Amrabat in - no money.
Reminder that we don't actually know anything about what happens behind the scenes. Ok, it's obvious the player wans to come here. But we have no idea what ETH thinks and what, if anything, was promised by the board.

To make a claim of "false promises" when you don't even know what has been discussed between club and manager, is rather bizarre.
 

NLunited

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What I have seen of him the stats match the eye test. But I havent watched many matches with him and since you say you have watched him a lot, I would love to hear that context.
Honestly I was extremely surprised when I heard we where in for him, so would love to get it cleared up.
Ok, if you look at his defensive stats it will show that he doesn’t tackle or intercept a lot. It also shows a high succes rates for tackles.

When you watch him play, you see that he does do a decent amount of defensive work: he will chase down and bully dribblers, and when he tackles he comes out of it with the ball.

He is very press-resistant and a great passer. He would add a lot of composure to our midfield.

This vid sums it up well:
 

Lyng

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Ok, if you look at his defensive stats it will show that he doesn’t tackle or intercept a lot. It also shows a high succes rates for tackles.

When you watch him play, you see that he does do a decent amount of defensive work: he will chase down and bully dribblers, and when he tackles he comes out of it with the ball.

He is very press-resistant and a great passer. He would add a lot of composure to our midfield.

This vid sums it up well:
Thank you. I will have watch that video :)
 

Jeffthered

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This is embarrassing. Additionally, if we do not sign him, this will only further the sense of the lack of direction that seems to characterise this club at the moment. Why on Earth have we not made a bid yet? This should have been tied up weeks ago... always, always, always a drama, year in, year out and no one at the club seems to be doing anything about it!

How can we look to compete with other top clubs when we seem to be a week-to-week fiasco, on and off the pitch.

What is going on?

This ESPN article sums it up very, very well.
 

Mainoldo

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:lol: the fact that we let it get to a stage where we are relying on last minute sales shows how poorly we plan
The fact that he is being offered as a loan with obligation to buy and we still haven’t snapped this up proves how interested the whole recruitment team are with this transfer.
 

Kill3r7

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The fact that he is being offered as a loan with obligation to buy and we still haven’t snapped this up proves how interested the whole recruitment team are with this transfer.
I don’t think the loan w/ obligation to buy story is true, his contract is up at the end of the season.
 

Chairman Steve

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I hope someone like him gets signed.

I do find it suspicious how a ton of noise comes from dubious Italian sources and the more reliable Italian sources basically acknowledge those reports but never go further than that and sources outside of the Italian sphere are basically saying our interest is overstated. At times it feels like it’s an agent pushing this link hard for whatever reason.
 

Mainoldo

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Exactly, or how interested every other big team is in this supposedly “transformative” player.
He’s good. But they are standards. Space and time he looks great. In the Prem though he good be lost in the headlights. I really hope we have a plan.
 

RedorDead21

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Another Weghorst type loan will happen instead which again won’t get us anywhere near a title
 

peridigm

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This is embarrassing. Additionally, if we do not sign him, this will only further the sense of the lack of direction that seems to characterise this club at the moment. Why on Earth have we not made a bid yet? This should have been tied up weeks ago... always, always, always a drama, year in, year out and no one at the club seems to be doing anything about it!

How can we look to compete with other top clubs when we seem to be a week-to-week fiasco, on and off the pitch.

What is going on?

This ESPN article sums it up very, very well.
Contrary to popular belief, the club does not sign players based on the will of fans, agents, or twitter users. Have you considered the possibility that we were never interested in him and this is just typical agent postering to get his client a move? Or, maybe we were interested at one time and that interest has dropped? It’s pretty easy to link any club with a player based on the clubs obvious need for a new player in a certain position. It’s no secret we were willing to let Fred and McTominay leave. It’s also not news that United are constantly used to sway potential suitors one way or another.
 

sebsheep

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Another Weghorst type loan will happen instead which again won’t get us anywhere near a title
There are very few players we could sign who would single handily set us up for a title challenge...
 

Mainoldo

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I don’t think the loan w/ obligation to buy story is true, his contract is up at the end of the season.
Which is why it makes sense. They can’t afford to miss out on money. So even if it means getting rid of him now with guaranteed funds next summer… they will take it.
 

Oranges038

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Had a look at this from Sky, they couldn't even get the right player in the picture at the start.
 

Jeffthered

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Contrary to popular belief, the club does not sign players based on the will of fans, agents, or twitter users. Have you considered the possibility that we were never interested in him and this is just typical agent postering to get his client a move? Or, maybe we were interested at one time and that interest has dropped? It’s pretty easy to link any club with a player based on the clubs obvious need for a new player in a certain position. It’s no secret we were willing to let Fred and McTominay leave. It’s also not news that United are constantly used to sway potential suitors one way or another.
Of course. A number of could be's and variables, of course it could be this, or a number of other factors. Or it could be that we simply conduct our business in a rather inefficient manner. City buy Kovacic, hardly a whisper. The whole world knows Arsenal want Declan Rice, and it gets done in plenty time.

We need additional midfield players, and we cannot even decide who we actually want? Or whether we want players?

It's a mess, and the indecision is not a great look for the club and leads to such confusion.
 
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VP89

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Of course. A number of could be's and variables, of course it could be this, or a number of other factors. Or it could be that we simply conduct our business in a rather inefficient manner. City by Kovacic, hardly a whisper. The whole world knows Arsenal want Declan Rice, and it gets done in plenty time.

We need additional midfield players, and we cannot even decide who we actually want? Or whether we want players?

It's a mess, and the indecision is not a great look for the club and leads to such confusion.
We have a list, we are working through that list. We will probably get a CM.
 

peridigm

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Of course. A number of could be's and variables, of course it could be this, or a number of other factors. Or it could be that we simply conduct our business in a rather inefficient manner. City by Kovacic, hardly a whisper. The whole world knows Arsenal want Declan Rice, and it gets done in plenty time.

We need additional midfield players, and we cannot even decide who we actually want? Or whether we want players?

It's a mess, and the indecision is not a great look for the club and leads to such confusion.
That is my point. You make it sound like we have to make our intentions public. Sometimes that might happen but it shouldn’t be a shocker when it doesn’t. You’re basing your assumption we can’t decide on what players we want because we haven’t signed a player that was linked by twitter users. Only those on the outside are confused.
 

Oranges038

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I've noticed Sky Sports going down this sort of route recently, very YouTube adjacent content in style and delivery and it falls hilariously short of even that low bar.
No idea who that guy even is. But they have the wrong player in that first shot, I'm fairly sure that's Saponara.

They've taken 3 stats and that's what they base their opinion on the players available from. Really terrible stuff, can't believe people pay to watch that nonsense.
 

Trex

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No idea who that guy even is. But they have the wrong player in that first shot, I'm fairly sure that's Saponara.

They've taken 3 stats and that's what they base their opinion on the players available from. Really terrible stuff, can't believe people pay to watch that nonsense.
He's bald, bearded and plays for Florentina so.... :lol:
 

parmenio

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We clearly need a player of this type. The fact ETH chose to spend £60m on Mount worries me. Mount may even prove to be a great player for us but he doesn’t help the balance of the team or fit what we need in midfield. We are very short and have a definite need of this profile of player is there better than him no doubt but we cannot afford them which is the bad part.
 

MadMike

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I’m usually not like this, but we need midfield cover badly.
We don't need cover, really. We have that. We need better quality of options and more skillset variety.

We arguably have 6 senior players (Bruno, Mount, Eriksen, VDB, McTominay, Casemiro) for 3 midfield positions at the moment. More if you include youngsters like Hannibal & Mainoo. Even if we drill into DMs specifically, we have 3 DMs at the club: Case, Scott and Mainoo. I don't rate Scott as DM but that's where ETH played him all of last season, so it is what it is. If Scott doesn't leave, it's hard to argue we need more DM cover. Especially when we only play with 1 DM in our default line-up.

If we're arguing that we need to improve the quality of our options, or add someone with a slightly different skillset (i.e. more DLP than DM) then yes. I would agree there. But ultimately there is only a limited number of first team players that we can register (25) and just adding players without selling creates more problems than it solves. We're in a situation where we really need to sell or loan out players to make space for new ones.
 

hobbers

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Napoli will get him for 20m euros and meanwhile Levy will quote us £40m for Hojbjerg
 

fallengt

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This is embarrassing. Additionally, if we do not sign him, this will only further the sense of the lack of direction that seems to characterise this club at the moment. Why on Earth have we not made a bid yet?
All the noise came from Italy. Just like Kim Min Jae transfer.
Is United even interested?
 

Mickeza

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The fact that he is being offered as a loan with obligation to buy and we still haven’t snapped this up proves how interested the whole recruitment team are with this transfer.
No! I read on Twitter we absolutely want him. It must be true. Embarrassing we haven’t signed a player we could easily have signed if we wanted to at any point in the last 3 months.
 

OrcaFat

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We don't need cover, really. We have that. We need better quality of options and more skillset variety.

We arguably have 6 senior players (Bruno, Mount, Eriksen, VDB, McTominay, Casemiro) for 3 midfield positions at the moment. More if you include youngsters like Hannibal & Mainoo. Even if we drill into DMs specifically, we have 3 DMs at the club: Case, Scott and Mainoo. I don't rate Scott as DM but that's where ETH played him all of last season, so it is what it is. If Scott doesn't leave, it's hard to argue we need more DM cover. Especially when we only play with 1 DM in our default line-up.

If we're arguing that we need to improve the quality of our options, or add someone with a slightly different skillset (i.e. more DLP than DM) then yes. I would agree there. But ultimately there is only a limited number of first team players that we can register (25) and just adding players without selling creates more problems than it solves. We're in a situation where we really need to sell or loan out players to make space for new ones.
Yes we need better options. Yes we need to sell.

We need better options because our current ones are not very good. We can’t sell our current options because they aren’t very good. Jeez, what to do?
 

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We don't need cover, really. We have that. We need better quality of options and more skillset variety.

We arguably have 6 senior players (Bruno, Mount, Eriksen, VDB, McTominay, Casemiro) for 3 midfield positions at the moment. More if you include youngsters like Hannibal & Mainoo. Even if we drill into DMs specifically, we have 3 DMs at the club: Case, Scott and Mainoo. I don't rate Scott as DM but that's where ETH played him all of last season, so it is what it is. If Scott doesn't leave, it's hard to argue we need more DM cover. Especially when we only play with 1 DM in our default line-up.

If we're arguing that we need to improve the quality of our options, or add someone with a slightly different skillset (i.e. more DLP than DM) then yes. I would agree there. But ultimately there is only a limited number of first team players that we can register (25) and just adding players without selling creates more problems than it solves. We're in a situation where we really need to sell or loan out players to make space for new ones.
VDB obviously isn't an option and on his way out. So it's 5 players for 3 positions (six if you include Mainoo, who should only really be a youth option this season, not someone you need to rely upon).

At that point if you get one injury (like we have now with Mount) you have 4 players for 3 positions, and when the games start ramping up that is nowhere near enough.
 
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