Denis' cuff
Full Member
Glazers
Lack of football people in charge of football operationsFar off the pace in the league. Diminishing reputation in the continent. No effective/decisive plan of improvement this summer.
No this isn't another having a moan thread, I'd like to think the above we can all agree on. anyway.
I am just interested in folks opinion on the question in the thread title:
Who/what do you think is holding the club back?
i.e What is the main contributor to our recent lack of success and loss of club stature?
This! People love to ignore this as a lot of fans are obsessed with big names / big money transfers.As an outsider United's biggest shortcoming appears to be the inability to fill a certain percentage of your roster with smart and relatively cheap transfers. You have got to identify talent at the right time, take a bit of risk and with the right culture you too can have your own version of Gnabry, Kimmich, Coman and Davies for less than 50m €. There is never enough money to fill a core 18 men rotation just with big expensive signings.
Pretty much, Football is full of mistakes but the best clubs have a way to mitigate them, would you say the same thing about Everton over the last 5 years? You have spent a lot of money and have seemingly made the same type of mistakes without fixing them efficiently?You've made poor decisions and haven't had the expertise to deal with those decisions when they've been made. Let's not sit here and pretend that SAF didn't make poor decisions either. Of course he did. But he and the team around him was capable of rectifying them when they were made and finding a solution to it. The chopping and changing of managers, the wrong personnel and the wrong decisions have led to you struggling to get to the top again.
There does need to be a bit more realism from the fan side of thing too though.
Yep, we are in the same position as you in regards to trying to shift 'deadwood'. Either nobody wants to take them or we are having to dramatically reduce the asking price for the players. Walsh, our previous DOF, didn't really seem to have a specific transfer strategy and some of the decisions and transfers we made under him are now trying to be sorted out by Brands. He's no angel but he's fighting a losing battle at times with players that nobody wants to take. He's made some poor signings of his own but I'd say that he at least has some strategy to what he's trying to do at the club. I think he's trying to connect the U23 to the Senior team a lot more than we have been doing in the past 5 years and give a clear pathway to the first team that we used to have. That's one thing you have managed to do right in amongst the many failures.Pretty much, Football is full of mistakes but the best clubs have a way to mitigate them, would you say the same thing about Everton over the last 5 years? You have spent a lot of money and have seemingly made the same type of mistakes without fixing them efficiently?
At United when a mistake is made, it takes an eternity to fix it. I have assumed for a long time that it's due to misplaced pride and a fear to make new mistakes which are two common but useless feelings. United isn't particularly focused on money or maximizing it, so that theory should die and we don't have a particular strategey when it comes to transfers, we also aren't particularly slow in transfers.
100%.Ed Woodward, The Glazers and their collective lack of knowledge in running a successful football club without David Gill and Sir Alex.
It’s simple. 7 years later and still no director of football installed says it all.
The last part is true and why I'm not as defeated as many are. The club needed to fix it's academy problems and they managed to do it brilliantly the same people that are accused of not caring about football have done one of the things that is often overlooked by football executives which is youth football and the link to the professional team. After that there have been clear mistakes and to me the pattern is that instead of picking a manager that suited United we tried to pick managers that seemed reassuring from the outside "the proven" type, we did the same with players. Personally the pattern that I see is a risk averse pattern which is a good thing when you have SAF but a bad thing when you are trying to look for creative answers in order to close the gap with teams that are in a more settled phase.Yep, we are in the same position as you in regards to trying to shift 'deadwood'. Either nobody wants to take them or we are having to dramatically reduce the asking price for the players. Walsh, our previous DOF, didn't really seem to have a specific transfer strategy and some of the decisions and transfers we made under him are now trying to be sorted out by Brands. He's no angel but he's fighting a losing battle at times with players that nobody wants to take. He's made some poor signings of his own but I'd say that he at least has some strategy to what he's trying to do at the club. I think he's trying to connect the U23 to the Senior team a lot more than we have been doing in the past 5 years and give a clear pathway to the first team that we used to have. That's one thing you have managed to do right in amongst the many failures.
100%And while within a season or two, the buck stops with the manager, within a decade, the buck stops with the manager's boss.
Correct, we actually gave our Managers far too much power.We had shit managers who spent a load of money on shit players.
We also have fans who see us improving in Europe/Cups/League position as 'falling reputation'
Bruno and Harry at 26 and 26 do have some resale value, as did Mata at the time (26). None of them could be said to be hugely costly signings though in the way Pogba was(23) or Sancho would be (20). Matic is the only outlier really as we tend to avoid the 27 to 30 players as they demand a fee that you won't get back. After that we've always in the market for 30+ free agents - until the Sanchez experience made us realise it was often a waste of money.Please explain Bruno & Harry, neither we’re cheap nor would we be able to sell in a few years for greater value. Prior to that Mata & Matic, I don’t see the theme you do...
back on thread, the owners, they have the final say in everything, so not challenging for major honours since SAF left is on them.
Behave with that nonsense, no doubt you'll be telling me that two of the most highly rated young kids in Europe, Marc Jurado(Barcelona) and Alvaro Fernandez Carreras(Real Madrid) are only joining United because we are offering more money.Far off the pace in the league. Diminishing reputation in the continent. No effective/decisive plan of improvement this summer.
No this isn't another having a moan thread, I'd like to think the above we can all agree on. anyway.
I am just interested in folks opinion on the question in the thread title:
Who/what do you think is holding the club back?
i.e What is the main contributor to our recent lack of success and loss of club stature?
Yes to a few of those questions.Do fans make footballing decisions for the club?
Did the fans decide to pay DDG the money he is on?
Did the fans decide that we should spend money on Sanchez?
Did the fans decide that Perreira, Jones to get a contract?