....highest wage bill, as well.

I'm not entirely sure the figures stack up anyway unless they were taken from transfer league and so are simply wrong.

Like I said, we had just started a massive squad rebuild with a new manager, This will be your 3rd year with Pellegrini, and a much more settled squad with your best players in their prime, so you'd expect City to do better.

Trying to stabilise? You mean doing exactly what Arsenal have done for a decade for 10x the amount of money?

Do you not agree that you should be reaching the latter stages of the CL?

Pellegrini won the league in his first year, why shouldn't van gaal have? And interesting you say our players are in their prime when only 6 months ago they were all "past it"

comment by Boris 'Inky' Gibson (U5901)

posted 13 minutes ago

....highest wage bill, as well.
..........
it was one of our lowest in last decade.

Because Pellegrini took over a settled squad, not a squad that had just finished 7th and needed a major overhaul, that's fairly obvious

Moyes had the highest wage bill, thats what people some reason are dumb enough to account for LVG squad. I saw many reputable organisations like sky and the newspapers state same nonsense using 2013/14 wage bill for LVG 2014/15 side.

Major overhaul? De gea, Smalling, Carrick, Jones, mata, Rooney, Carrick, young, all still play their part don't they?

We virtually have a new side to the one SAF had, newish defenders and midfielders and attack, even goalkeeper. Virtually half the squad is completely different to what SAF won title with. Its changed so much only Carrick Rooney De Gea Lindegaard Smalling Jones Valencia Evans Young Rooney Hernandez remain from the 1st team squad SAF left. Thats only 11 players from a squad of around 25.

We got rid of far more players then we have bought since SAF left.

Mmm

Seems like the same stick that was used when sheikh mansour came onboard no longer applies...

Do you not think you should be reaching the latter stages of the CL?

Would United have got past bayern barca or Madrid?

Madrid and barca knocked us out and they went on to win.

If we had some of the luck United have had with draws then we may well have gone further.

I think any cup competition should be taken on an individual basis rather than looking to get to a particular round. If you have a run of Porto, Monaco and Benfica to get to a semi final or you get Barcelona in the second round, it seems a ridiculous comparable to me.

It's not as if our management one day thought: Sack this. This is boring. Let's get knocked out so we can have more time to go to Cheshire Oaks.

Pellegrini took over a squad that had just lost the title to United and the FA Cup to Wigan.

It was anything but 'settled'.

Funny you say about luck as last two times we were knocked out were against Bayern Munich and Real Madrid one with a red card against Real Madrid and a disallowed goal against Bayern Munich.

So you finished 2nd and got to an F.A cup final, as opposed to finishing 7th. It was clearly a more settled squad, we also had a big player turnaround in the summer, making it even more unsettled. Not even comparable.

7th using a title winning squad as a starting point...
But that's neither here nor there, is it?

Not when you've just lost Fergie, no.

It's the same set of circumstances that lots of clubs deal with continuously as they don't have the stability of one man being in charge for that long. It's more impactful when you have a lot of the squad that have been at the same club for a while too, but most of those have now retired.

Basically - last year you had the expensive squad, but have listed several excuses as to why you only finished fourth. This year we have the most expensive squad, yet should achieve x, y, z. Double standards whether or not I think we should push on in Europe this year, and I think you lot roll out the "transition" phrase too easily these days.