Varane

My view is that we probably need to accept that building a job that can challenge for big titles is a medium-term project (3-4 seasons away at least). If we really want to get to that destination as soon as possible, it involves taking decisions that will hurt us more in the short term. One of United's many mistakes over the Woordward era was impatiently trying to short-cut to success with silver bullet signings. In 2014 or 2016 no one wanted to think we'd take several seasons to build back to a title challenging side, but I bet in retrospect we all wish we'd taken that approach then.

In that context, Varane is an example of players who clearly aren't going to be around when we next challenge for the title and who don't really have the attributes to start the journey towards playing a more coherent type of football, but whose quality and experience can be helpful in the meantime. Personally, I would advocate moving such players on sooner rather than later, to accelerate the rebuild, in the knowledge that the young player who replaces him will sometimes perform at a lower level next season.

comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 7 hours, 26 minutes ago
We need to replace Maguire and Varane.
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I’m sure all of Maguire, AWB, Lindelof have 1 year left.

Then you have Verane and Martial expiring, Casemiro wages need freeing up.

With a new team behind the scenes and possibly a new manager, I don’t think we can expect too much this season.

comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 8 hours, 9 minutes ago
We need to replace Maguire and Varane.
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I don't disagree. There's loads of players I think we can move on that won't really have much of an effect as well because they never play even when fit.

It'd be great if we could somehow strike lucky and find 3/4 players over the Summer who make a real difference to the first XI. They don't necessarily have to be expensive either. Just the right fit.

I suppose we just don’t know what our transfer policy is going to look like right now also. I think we need to get rid of some of our experienced players due to their lack of reliability, but I hope it’s not something we’ll just ignore as part transfer policy moving forward. I know they’re an extreme case, but look at Chelsea with their awful policy of just signing young players.

Tottenham got their first choice GK, CB and RB for around £80m last summer and all have done very well this season. I’m sure there are far better suited players out there, we just lack the structure in place to identify and buy them.

At least we got Mount for £60m a year before he was available for free.

comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
Tottenham got their first choice GK, CB and RB for around £80m last summer and all have done very well this season. I’m sure there are far better suited players out there, we just lack the structure in place to identify and buy them.

At least we got Mount for £60m a year before he was available for free.
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Keep forgetting mount "plays" for us

Something I noticed from Ole's appearance on The Overlap, is that managers don't neccisarrily get the players they want at the club. By all accounts he pushed hard for Haaland to be told no, and we couldn't convince Jude Bellingham.

Maybe ETH didn't demand the transfers like Antony (who by all accounts we wanted under Ole too) and Mount.

Haaland and Bellingham are 2 of the biggest talents in the game, it was always highly unlikely we were ever gonna get either.

I’m pretty certain EtH had a big influence on buying Antony (as well as many other players, it’s not a coincidence we’ve bought so many players EtH has previously managed). Haven’t read anything saying Ole wanted Antony, only that the club scouts valued him at £25m but according to Ole the club scout thousands of players, we just don’t seem to know what to do with all that data.

Of course they don’t, top players are obviously going to turn us down because we are shiiiiit.

comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 2 hours, 11 minutes ago
Of course they don’t, top players are obviously going to turn us down because we are shiiiiit.
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Varane, Casemiro, Onana are / were considered top players when we signed them.