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

But this is the thing about the 'clear and obvious error' guideline for VAR. It gets interpreted differently all the time.

Some people think that it means the referee must have a moment of incompetence before sending him to the screen, ie. he should have seen and processed the incident in real time and decided it was a foul.

Whereas others think that if you see something that looks like a clear foul in one of the replays then you should send him to the screen, even if the on field decision was perfectly understandable from the ref's view/perspective in real time.

This is my issue with VAR - it is open to too much interpretation and some of the guidelines are fuzzy at best.

Another pet peeve of mine is when a ref is sent to the screen, is he supposed to re-ref the decision? Or is allowed to say 'yeah, it's probably a penalty looking at it again, but I don't actually think this was a "clear and obvious error" from me, so I don't think you should have sent me to the screen and I'm not going to overturn the decision'.

Attacking player drags at the keepers arm. Keepers are protected, that is usually a free.

By clicking and watching it you're giving Sky exactly what they want. Dermot Gallagher doesn't believe any of the **** he says. Hes making clickbait soundbites for his employer because if he doesn't then he'll be replaced by another ex-ref that will. We didnt get the free out and we didn't get the penalty and saying we should have got them won't get any clicks for Sky. It's that simple.

Have to correct you on Pogba and Sancho fees. €105m in 2016 and €85 in 2021 are very different especially with football inflation.

Anyways, you’re right that he was nowhere near the let down that Sancho was.

Ultimately Pogba was just far too inconsistent for the world record transfer of the time.

Talking about bad value for money, just remembered Juan Sebastian Verón!

A bidding war for young Rasmus? Napoli could be an interesting move. Transfermarkt says they have three other CFs. Two are players that have returned from loan and the other is a player they got in on loan from Udinese.

Not sure what the striker situation at AC Milan is but Napoli would be the better club. Conte is a good manager and the move there has worked miracles for McTominay.

They're supposedly close to signing Senne Lammens so I doubt its true

Hoijlund would really improve under Conte. It's a great opportunity for the lad, way better than wasting away on our bench for a year.

Apologies, yes you’re right on fee.

I do think fact Pogba left on a free twice and had a pretty polarising personality clouds peoples judgement on him. Expectations we are also off the charts.

Just had a look back on his historical sofascore ratings. Not saying they’re perfect but they are definitely a very good indicator.

16/17- 7.66 (1st out of 16 players to play 50% minutes)

17/18 7.40 (2nd out of 14)

18/19 7.21 (1st out of 14)

19/20 7.13 (3rd out of 15)

20/21 6.98 (7th out of 15)

He’s statistically our second best player post Fergie (after Bruno)

I disagree, he trailed off badly at the end but imo he was clearly our best player in his first few seasons. The stats back that up and I’m confident the players at the time would agree.

Stats are much more reliable than memories.

Who would you put above him? Transfer fee, wages & off field attitude aside.

He was reportedly the top keeper target for clubs all last summer at around 65m, apart for one rumour to City earlier in the summer I didn't notice too many this year for him, what has happened to him?

I would have thought we'd be all over him at that price

So other than his exorbitant fee, his outrageous wages and his awful application and attitude that contributed to destroying the club I've to rate him. This is giving me what have the Romans ever done for us vibes.

Players that contributed more to Utd since Pogbas transfer in no particular order ; Bruno, David De Gea, Rashford, Ronaldo, Scott McTominay, Casemiro, Maguire, Shaw, Juan Mata, Ander Herrera and thats just off the top of my head. I don't particularly care what stats you manipulate to say Pogba was good, I watched all those games and I know what I saw and I remember the debates on here.

Pogba isn't quite on the Sancho level but that doesn't mean he was good either. And overall his transfer did more damage to the dressing room than can be quantified by his passing percentages or aerial duels won in the middle third of the pitch.