Pogba

Don't see it happening, but if splurging £80m on the lad speeds up Fletcher's retirement then i'm all for it.

comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin - Fellaini can be our Yaya (U2958)
posted 33 minutes ago
I'm sure if Ronaldo, who also wasn't pulling up trees at 18, wasn't anywhere near the first team squad upon arrival, he'd have been crying and acting unprofessional.
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I'm 100% sure he wouldn't

ronaldo is the epitome of a player who will train and train and train.... play and play and play... Regardless of level... Until he made it to the top.
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Bit of a contradiction there though.

If he wants to be the best, which he clearly did, and wanted to play and play and play, he would've cried about not being in the first team and look for a suitor that would play him and play him and play him, allowing him to develop into the best, not leaving him in the reserves.

Possibly, when transfer window opened... But unlike Pogba, he would have played and played and played in the reserves, and made himself the very best player on any pitch he walked onto.

Pogba, like many a kid before him, played 30 minutes for the first team, then deemed himself too good for the reserves. His performances dropped like a stone after that cameo.

Still stands, that at the end of the day, Pogba went on to prove SAF wrong ....he was ready. If we do end up shelling 80 odd mil, it will be interesting to see what saf response will be to that and what more he could have done to save United shelling out such an heafty fee for a player he refused to play.

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Again, you're assuming that Fergie didn't think he was capable of playing at the required level, when I'm suggesting it was a case of attitude. If he wasn't showing the right desire to prove himself when he put on the reserve team shirt, should he really have been rewarded by getting into the first team?

You may say that history proves that he should have been. But if you make that call for Pogba, you have to apply the same rule for every talented youngster who isn't showing the right attitude in the reserves even though he is more skilled than someone in the first team. Replay the history of the last 25 years and see how that approach to team building works.

Again, you're assuming that Fergie didn't think he was capable of playing at the required level, when I'm suggesting it was a case of attitude. If he wasn't showing the right desire to prove himself when he put on the reserve team shirt, should he really have been rewarded by getting into the first team?

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Red I do get your point to a degree in that Pogba may well have pulled his face at not getting the starts ... even saf came out saying he should be getting more first team experience. But if you have total belief in your own ability and feel you're not getting the chance to show it, what are you going to do? Sit there for another season or two or leave?

Rock Steady

I'm not saying he was wrong to leave. That's up to him. I'm just saying we should give Fergie the benefit of the doubt: that there's a good chance he had valid reasons for not playing Pogba *yet* even though he had big plans for the lad.

Red, SAF had a strange way of showing his faith in Pogba by persistently playing the likes of Cleverley, Park, Anderson, Giggs and Gibson all ahead of him. Think the straw the broke the camels back was Scholes coming out of retirement tbh.

Pogba must have looked at our MF & thought - wtf is saf waiting for? The same sentiments alot of our own fans were voicing at the time.

comment by Rock Steady ⚽™ Philosophy > Football (U9953)
posted 4 minutes ago
Red, SAF had a strange way of showing his faith in Pogba by persistently playing the likes of Cleverley, Park, Anderson, Giggs and Gibson all ahead of him. Think the straw the broke the camels back was Scholes coming out of retirement tbh.

Pogba must have looked at our MF & thought - wtf is saf waiting for? The same sentiments alot of our own fans were voicing at the time.
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Those of us that were watching the reserves at the time knew why SAF wasn't starting him - his performances had dropped.

Elvis, I too watched him in the reserves often and tbh even on a bad day he still stood head and shoulders above everyone else.

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 6 hours, 33 minutes ago
You are doing awesome at work a promotion comes up in the job you've been training to do for the past 3years and instead of giving you the job your company brings back a retiree.

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This isn't a black-and-white issue and in retrospect there are few people who don't wish Fergie had handled it differently. However, your account leaves out the fact that Fergie publicly said he saw Pogba as the future and wanted him to sign up to stay as well as the fact that Pogba wasn't showing the kind of desire in reserves that said 'I'll make you play me'.

And the point I always make when this debate flares up is that Fergie's ethos of not tolerating 'I've already made it, I deserve to be picked' attitudes was crucial to our success over the last 25 years. As such, losing the odd egotistical but excellent player as collateral damage was well worth it.

As to the OP, I don't see bad blood as that much of an obstacle. Fergie has moved on and is a pragmatist deep down anyway. The fans won't care if he is the player we need. And Pogba may or may not care about water under the bridge. Perhaps he is deeply wounded by what happened. Perhaps he has grown up and doesn't care. Perhaps he'll happily go to play for the highest bidder. We've seen enough brazen and unprincipled behaviour in football to be surprised by nothing.
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As usual RR, excellent post and spot on.