Manchester United Thread 25/26 - Teamtalk/Transfers/Gossip Mod Note in OP 26.09.24

Have the BBC missed Amorim’s point with that headline though?

“Amorim said before the window closed that the club were "trying everything" to strengthen the squad but they failed to make any further additions.”

So they were trying to make additions. My understanding of it would be that the right options weren’t available for whatever reason - so they only ended up with Dorgu and Heaven.

"What I feel is that the club is taking its time. We know the urgency of the moment of the team (but) everybody here does not want to make the same mistakes of the past.

"In the summer we will see but like I said we are being really careful with transfers because we did some mistakes in the past."

This all reads to me that if the right player was available + affordable they would have done it. The club is taking its time, it’s not like it’s all on Amorim, he is head coach after all. And that they weren’t going to spend for the sake of spending just to get people in the door, as that was done for years with a poor success rate, and also kicks the problem further down the line.

I don’t think this is any indication that he’s happy with the players or believes the squad he has will be capable of being very competent for the rest of the season.

The risk he refers to, appears to be regarding changing the system mid season, with the players he has available and less so that he didn’t want to bring in new players, imo. I think the headline is misleading and just clickbait really and not fully representative of what he’s saying. Anything for clicks I guess. Of course he wanted a striker but if funds are limited, he wouldn’t want someone who isn’t the right person to come in now and then be tied up in the summer with less money and one more striker who he doesn’t actually want.

By the way I don’t think you’re wrong to expect improvement. They can’t all be bad players and with more and more coaching of that system, things should get better of him and his people are good at their job.

Or he wants to sign better players in the summer rather than compromise in January.

It's the correct way of doing things. We need to be more prudent going forward ensure proper due diligence is done before signing players. In the past we ended up panick buying and also signing washed up big name players.

Not worth the money they'd cost and therefor reduce the money available for better players.

Tel, for example, costing spurs 10million for 4 months. He felt that money could be better spent next summer rather than chasing the fa Cup and europa league win this season.

We apparently valued nkunku at 40m, Chelsea asked for 60m. Should we have paid it.

The club might have said if you want to sign whatever player they could do a deal on we would need to sell garnacho and maybe he didn't feel like selling garnacho was the right move in January.

Sure if we follow your logic of there simply isn't players he'd want more then we won't sign anyone in the summer. Right?

At this point the target for this season could simply be : get to the summer.

I don't think there's any one player getting us CL football.

Muani, or maybe Morata who also went on loan, could have got 5-7 goals but I dint think it's getting us 12 more points that the teams ahead of us for EL. I think such a player could get us hitting the same form or close it as the teams we'd be competing with, but not 12 points or do more.

And ighalo wasn't that cheap. 10+million loan fee iirc, plus wages. And he was rubbish after his first couple of games.

It's not worth as much in net terms though? Most players have the 25% salary reduction clause if we don't qualify which offsets much of the CL revenue losses. It's still obviously much better to be in it, but the immediate hit isn't as bad.

We are bookies favorites for the Europa league, give whatever percentage chance you want around 9/2, but no loan striker is going to turn the needle in any significant way % wise in terms of winning it

Agree that it's not sensible to bring in loan transfers for the purpose of cup competitions.

But I doubt they have given up on winning the Europa League. It's much more winnable this year because no CL teams fall into it anymore. Despite how bad we've been, we're the bookies favourites to win it alongside Spurs. Then you have Bilbao and Lazio, and after that you have 9 or 10 average sides. This group of players also has a good record in knockout matches. 2 cup wins in two years, FA Cup final and EL quarters in 2023, knocking out Arsenal at the Emirates despite being down to 10 men etc. I would be very disappointed to lose to any of the current EL teams over two legs with the exception of Spurs (which I'd expect to be 50:50).

I wonder what the finances around his personal terms would be in the event of the option being taken. Would United need to cover the balance left on his contract based on the current loan split or would it be up for negotiation?

Hope he lights it up there. Best for all involved.

they've seemingly decided they don't want to spend money on players that are not in the medium/long term plans.

and maybe they can get to the long term (next season…) by getting past the short term (this season…)

I wish they would have made a signing in January. but i would want them to be a signing that we will have or expect to have for the next number of years, not the next 16 weeks.

and, to be honest… LOL at you saying everything could fall apart of Dorgu - the player we did sign for a position we had need in - doesn't settle but we should have thrown cash at a short term signing… that I assume in your world would settle immediately and perform like a deamon for us.

I thought we had already been through the whole thing about any player at any club and at any time might or might not settle, do we really need to do it again?

But I note that you again use words like "should have thrown the cash" when I specifically called out the fact that it does not need to involve large sums of money at all.

I say again, you do not need to "throw the cash" at all short term signings. That is nothing but a false narrative.

One huge difference with Arteta and Arsenal. They are looking for the final piece of the jigsaw, the cherry on top of a very nice cake. That player by definition is going to be harder to find and more expensive to acquire.

Meanwhile there will be a lot of players that could improve the worst United squad in history.

Another huge difference with Arteta and Amorim is the time they've managed their teams.

Arteta has built his, Amorim has 1 player so far.

Damn I don't like them but liverpool are probably right now the best team in Europe, will probably win 2 if not 3 cups this season, is slot that good or is he lucky with the squad klopp left him,