bargain players

gundogan
kagawa

both signed by dortmund for a total of 6 million.

Dortmund built an entire squad with bargains, only Mkhitaryan, Aubameyang and Reus cost more than 10m

Getting Hummels from Bayern's youth was a great move as well.

I'm sorry, but my interpretation of the word bargain in footballing terms is buying a player for a fraction of what they are worth. In football if you buy a player for cheap who becomes a superstar it is lucky. Look at the 'potential' we have wasted money on in the past.

Few of those players signed by Dortmund would have commanded much higher fees had other clubs tried to sign them.

Dortmund got very lucky.

comment by Long time reader, first time poster... (U9335)
posted 49 seconds ago
I'm sorry, but my interpretation of the word bargain in footballing terms is buying a player for a fraction of what they are worth. In football if you buy a player for cheap who becomes a superstar it is lucky. Look at the 'potential' we have wasted money on in the past.

Few of those players signed by Dortmund would have commanded much higher fees had other clubs tried to sign them.

Dortmund got very lucky.
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No they didn't.

You get lucky like that multiple times.

They had Sahin come through their ranks. And had a few good seasons and they knew he was going to leave, so they set about signing a replacement. Gundogan is essentially Sahin.

comment by Long time reader, first time poster... (U9335)
posted 1 minute ago
I'm sorry, but my interpretation of the word bargain in footballing terms is buying a player for a fraction of what they are worth. In football if you buy a player for cheap who becomes a superstar it is lucky. Look at the 'potential' we have wasted money on in the past.

Few of those players signed by Dortmund would have commanded much higher fees had other clubs tried to sign them.

Dortmund got very lucky.
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there's no luck involved in what Dortmund have done, it has come from fantastic coaching, scouting and playing a system to suit the players, which is what we should be doing, i think we lack a philosophy these days at united, we seem to have a mish mash of formations, which in tern leads to poor quality of football, and a squad full of players who aren;t good enough at the very highest level, we have some exceptions of course

i think we lack a philosophy these days at united, we seem to have a mish mash of formations.

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100% agree. There's no identity at the club anymore. We seem to buy players suited to different formations and we have totally digressed from our traditional style of the past 25 years. Was probably to be expected with SAF leaving, but I'd argue that even for the past 3 or 4 years we have had the same issue.

No fluency. Too cautious. We even lack pace these days and it seems to take an age to get the ball for DF to ATT.

No fluency. Too cautious. We even lack pace these days and it seems to take an age to get the ball for DF to ATT.

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That's more with the evolution of tactics in football. Teams tend to play with 3 men in midfield now, and it's difficult to quickly break through teams who eliminate that much space on the pitch. So you have to slow it down and drag them around the pitch more.

Obviously playing with a high tempo is still entirely possible, but it's more intertwined into the slow build up play. With teams picking their moments to change up the pace when it benefits them more. Or using countering play to much more effect.

Having insane off the ball movement ala Bayern is also key to playing quicker. Utd - among more or less every other team - don't have the players to consistently use a high tempo effectively.

Teams tend to play with 3 men in midfield now, and it's difficult to quickly break through teams who eliminate that much space on the pitch.

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Surely why we used to spread the ball wide quickly to bypass narrow 3 man midfields?

Teams were still using 3 man midfields in 2007/8, but that didn't stop us.

I think it's more to do with the players than the system.

It's probably been mentioned but Porto don't make huge profits on these players. They are mainly third party owned and hardly owned by Porto.