A 30+ year old Brazilian on inflated wages and probably for a stay that takes him to the age of 34, what could possibly go wrong.
They need to be getting in young, hungry players without reputations, much like Arsenal have done.
A 30+ year old Brazilian on inflated wages and probably for a stay that takes him to the age of 34, what could possibly go wrong.
They need to be getting in young, hungry players without reputations, much like Arsenal have done.
I presume they must be utterly desperate for top four. Still not going to be anywhere near.
He’s not joining from the biggest team in the world.
Nottingham Forest casually spending £44m on Morgan Gibbs-White
Money laundering anywhere and everywhere
Nottingham Forest signing Gibbs-White for £44.5m
11 in 35 in champ last season and gammon tax tbf. And his missus.
Forest in League 1 fighting administration within 7 years if they don't stay up this season. Utterly insane what they're up to.
Fulham spent £100m in 18/19 (Forest are on £140m), went down and were back one and three seasons later. If anything they're just consolidating their status as a Fulham/Norwich style yo-yo club.
Any pencil necked desk jockey who tries to enforce financial rules on Forest will sleep with the fishes like all those witnesses in the heroin smuggling case against the owner a few years back.
Without bothering to check the statistics, I feel like doing the tackles in a midfield of Toni Kroos and Luka Modric, which has a shit hot attack in front of it and a reasonably good defence behind it, is likely to be a lot easier than covering for Fred and Bruno Fernandes and all the other mongols. With that in mind, Casimiro has worst signing yet written all over it.
Only a four year deal on 360k a week.
United bidding €80m for Antony
Ajax rejecting it
If that Antony bid had been accepted then with Casemiro it would have taken our spending to like £200m this window.
So the money is clearly still there. It's just baffling how bad we are at spending it.
I've heard that Joel Glazer has basically insisted on being head of the transfer committee ever since their takeover, which would explain a lot
I don't think the issue has ever really been amount has it? Despite some fans crowing about a lack of investment. We just spend too much in all the wrong places.
Generally we spend a lot every time we don't make the Champions League, then if we finish top four and have a chance to push on, we have a Fred/Grant/Dalot window.
Even last summer, yes we spent reasonable amounts on Sancho and Varane but it amounted to less than what Nottingham Forest are spending this window. Given the incredibly evident need for midfielders, it was another case of half-arsed investment at a time when there was a chance to finally go forward.
So with Woodward gone, who is actually leading these deals and somehow being worse?
It's the Glazers.
Richard Arnold is the closest to being in Woodward's role but it's reported he is way less involved in the football side. He himself made the same clear in that leaked video when he said something like "You don't want me doing the transfers do you? Doesn't that sound familiar?" clearly referencing Woodward.
John Murtough is basically Director of Football, but if you look at his CV he hasn't actually really got pedigree for it. Arnold installed him to do the footballing bits of the job that Woodward used to do but he doesn't think he should be involved in (rightly so).
It depends what you mean by "leading these deals" as well. Do you mean choosing the targets, or actually negotiating?
In terms of choosing targets, we basically sacked all the senior people in the scouting department a few months ago and decided to give the manager most of the control over targets for this window (I imagine with input from Fletcher and Murtough), with a view to getting a new structure in place before the next window/next summer. With us failing to get Ten Hag's choices for midfield or forward, rumours are we've fallen back on old lists of players from previous years.
If you mean negotiating, I'm not entirely sure. I think Murtough and Arnold are involved. Matt Judge was our lead negotiator during Woodward era and is an absolute fucking clown. It was announced he's leaving but I think he's still actually there this window so he might well still be involved.
I think the problem this window has a lot of facets. Ten Hag's targets were not all actually attainable and he doesn't seem to have had any second choices. The scouting department being in bits pending a rebuild. Murtough not really having a clue. Once FDJ and Antony didn't happen, there was no plan and nobody within the club capable of finding the right alternative players.
And at the top of it all, Joel Glazer wants and still has ultimate control. So regardless of what the scouts/DoF/manager suggests, if Joel hasn't heard of them he'll just veto it.
Last edited by randomlegend; 19-08-2022 at 09:42 AM.
Ralf Rangnick Chief Executive, 'LvG' Director of Football, Sir Alex Ferguson banned from all club properties.
Can we be putting quotes around "scouting department" for United to give the idea the contempt it deserves?
Using FM.to sort most available / famous player by international caps or current salary and just going for whoever's at the top isn't scouting.
I'm sure I've said this when we've discussed this before but I went back through United's transfers one day and so far as I can tell the last person we signed who was a) unknown / relative unknown b) didn't cost a billion quid AND c) actually did anything was fucking Hernandez.
The obvious conclusion I would draw about their recruitment is that it's driven commercially rather than for football reasons. Why else would you repeatedly get in all these old 'names' rather than look forward.
Players tend to be better before they go there too. It's like the place sucks the life out of them.
Casemiro done to United.
And Antony appears to have not trained with Ajax today (refused?)
I wonder what's wrong with Casemiro.
Bored of winning
There must be something, it just doesn't make sense otherwise. Unless it's just going to be an absolutely mental money contract? Weird one all round. On the face of it a good signing though.
I mean, he's won absolutely everything at club level. I don't think it's that mad to suggest he might just want a new experience (losing lololol).
There's probably also a lure for players to United who want to bring the club back to glory.
It's the money £360k p/w for 5 years there is no way he's getting that in Madrid.
It's his final big deal so it makes sense. Actually an exciting transfer.
I've no idea how accurate it is, but I did enjoy the last two entries on his "similar players" section on fbref.
Not sure I really want a player who's actually prepared to sign for is.
Bloody terrorists.
Casemiro official.
£70m and £350k p/w+, with a 4/5 year deal.
Chelsea enquiring about Harry Maguire. Chelsea need to get someone in pronto to pick their targets. Tuchel is a mad man
Maguire should be in the championship.
Scenes when Maguire balls out in that Chelsea back 3.
He probably would but I don't care, I just want him off my team.
Maguire is one of a number of United players that I've no idea what their ceiling is but whatever it is they're not reaching it at United now.
That said, the slabheaded fuck can fuck the fuck off.
Maguire is a much better player for England where I'm sure he makes mistakes but they aren't as frequent or as glaring (even relative to the number of games) as the United ones because Waistcoat is all about organising a tight ship.
Even when he's got Kyle fucking Walker lolling all over the shop next to him he's not so bad.
He was good for the World Cup corner routines. England no longer do those.
He would be great covering a small space in that Chelsea system.