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

Carl Anka made the point that it's not like to his knowledge that United don't have access to same data that Brighton or Brentford would have. It's who you have at the club that is responsible for turning the data into useful information. And information that is relevant for where the club want to be.

Brighton are a selling club. They'll buy cheap and hope to make a fat profit. You hope that with the changes happening around buying young players more risks are taking at United. There was a list of young players United missed out on because of haggling or wanting to see them in Europe first. Supposedly that was the issue with not signing Caicedo when in South America.

Brighton have spent 80m this summer but have taken in 120m, so they're already +40m and there will be no pressure to sell. With 3 years left on his contract, they know they'll be able to command a huge fee next summer either. So this is really down to how close we can come to what will be a high asking price, and how much pressure (if any) Baleba and his team can put on them.

Or Ronaldinho.

LOL you know the answer to this already. There's always an angle to take when you want to have a moan

Probably signs a new contract this season with a release clause that comes into effect next summer. Though that may depend on if he feels they are trying to price him out of a move with a high release clause.

I would like to know how any 2 man midfield can work in Amorims system. Even if we had Keane and Kante there, it would be probably get run over by teams who pack the middle with 4/5.

It's a completely different thing really. Brighton's owner Tony Bloom is the greatest sports gambler who's ever lived. He basically invented XG before it was ever a thing in football circles and setup Starlizard and a small army of data modelists to become a professional gambling syndicate

Once he had made his first couple of billion he looked at football and identified it as being particularly badly run, so he bought his hometown club in Brighton. His team of modelers were able, in the process of evaluating teams for gambling purposes, to identify players and managers who were undervalued or overvalued by the market, thus why Brighton have had such startling success in buying and selling for what is a small club. It's why they could identify Potter in midtable in the championship or De Zerbi in the Italian lower divisions, they were knocking it out of the park on metrics. Brentford are very similar, also owned by a professional gambler in Matthew Benham, who's Blooms biggest personal rival

The process is markedly more complex now and notionally the likes of Chelsea or United can compete but realistically they can't. These are multi billion pound companies that live and die by getting it correct in the gambling market, they start getting it wrong they'll start losing hundreds of millions. A club like Chelsea, which is probably worth less overall than Starlizard, is never going to be able to compete with an entity 100% focused on outcome modeling. Same for United. The stuff they're passing onto Bloom and Brighton is just a by product of the function but a very useful one. That's why De Zerbi ended up leaving, he didn't want to listen to an owner who essentially ran every part of the club from outgoings to even specific tactics against certain teams

Conventional wisdom would also say that you shouldn't be taking players or managers from either Brighton or Brentford, but that's a different subject again

Done deal for Sesko

https://x.com/David_Ornstein/status/1953455317875921355?s=19

Sesko deal done

Nice one getting Sesko. If we get a CM, and it doesn't have to be Baleba, then I'll be as giddy as a fat kid with a mars bar.

Fully agree, money is ridiculous now in the game. You would think it will burst at some stage