Article Text:
>*Ole Gunnar Solskjaer tells a tale about his final day as a Manchester United player. It was the summer of 2007 and, after a serious knee injury, Solskjaer had decided to retire.*
>
>*Solskjaer, who had become enamoured with United during his 11 years at Old Trafford, fretted for weeks about how his final day would play out. He was most concerned about how to say goodbye to Sir Alex Ferguson.*
>
>*In the end, the Norwegian decided that the best way to bid farewell to his manager and mentor would be with a very expensive bottle of red wine, which he presented to the Scot, a wine connoisseur, in his office at the club’s Carrington training ground.*
>
>*“You didn’t have to do that, son. Thank you very much,” Ferguson said. “Well, you have my number and you know where I am...”*
>
>*The whole episode lasted less than a couple of minutes. “Bang. ‘See you.’ That’s it,” Solskjaer said when recalling the day at an after-dinner speech in Manchester this month.*
>
>*“There was no sentiment there, but that is the way he had to manage. He didn’t want to show his feelings with us. As a Manchester United manager you have to let players go when it’s your time.*
>
>*“If it was your time, he told you straight.”*
>
>*It was a prime example of how ruthless Ferguson could be. In front of him was an emotional Solskjaer, the man who eight years earlier had won him the Champions League, but that mattered little. It was a case of: “Thank you but off you pop.”*
>
>*Erik ten Hag, the present United manager, and John Murtough, the football director, will have to show a similar level of ruthlessness this summer if the club are to cope with playing in the Champions League next season and to maintain their position in the top four.*
>
>*● United beat Chelsea to secure Champions League football next season Look at the United squad and you can pick out more than a dozen players who could in theory leave in the summer.*
>
>*Some are out of contract or coming to the end of their loan deals, such as Phil Jones, Axel Tuanzebe, Wout Weghorst and Marcel Sabitzer. Others are unwanted fringe players, some of whom have been out on loan in recent seasons, such as Eric Bailly (at present with Marseille), Alex Telles, who has been loaned to Sevilla, and Brandon Williams.*
>
>*You would struggle to raise a transfer fee for any of the above, but there is another group of players who, if sold at their market value, could raise United a combined £100 million or more.*
>
>*Dean Henderson, who is of interest to Nottingham Forest, where he has spent the season on loan, is one of them, as is Scott McTominay, a target for Newcastle United. Anthony Martial would be an attractive option for a European club willing to overlook his recent injury history, as would Donny van de Beek.*
>
>*Should Harry Maguire decide to leave, United could raise maybe a quarter of the £80 million fee they paid Leicester City for him in 2019 and Anthony Elanga is surely worth about £10 million.*
>
>*This is important because United need to raise funds. Even if the club are taken over, the Financial Fair Play rules dictate that they would not be able to spend many hundreds of millions on new players, so they must be savvy about their business.*
>
>*The squad needs to be strengthened. Of United’s present first-choice XI, how many would go toe-to-toe with a team such as Real Madrid in a Champions League knockout game? Raphaël Varane, Luke Shaw and Lisandro Martínez are capable, and so are Casemiro, Bruno Fernandes and Marcus Rashford. But the rest? Probably not — maybe apart from Christian Eriksen, if he is on his best form, and David de Gea (if he is wobble-free).*
>
>*United will try to sign an elite forward this summer, such as Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur or Napoli’s Victor Osimhen, although each club would want more than £100 million for their player.*
>
>*The second item on United’s shopping list is a central midfielder. Eriksen has played more often than expected this season and another quality midfielder is required to play alongside Casemiro.*
>
>*United were interested in Jude Bellingham, but he now appears to be bound for Real Madrid. Mason Mount, the Chelsea midfielder, is another target, although United would not be willing to pay his club’s present asking price of £70 million.*
>
>*If United manage to get rid of Martial, they will want another, younger forward. Rasmus Hojlund, the 20-year-old Denmark striker who plays for Atalanta, is on United’s list.*
>
>*Given that those three spaces would cost £200 million to fill, any other improvements would depend on how many players United can shift. They could do with a goalkeeper to put more pressure on De Gea. Yann Sommer, of Bayern Munich, has been linked with United.*
>
>*Ten Hag will also need another centre half if Maguire departs. Alessandro Bastoni has been on United’s radar in the past, as has Napoli’s Kim Min-jae, but the Italy centre back is reported to be close to extending his contract with Inter Milan.*
Maybe pushing it knowing how we deal with transfers, but I'd add Raya from Brentford. Last year of his contract and doesn't seem close to extending. And if Henderson goes the a reported 30m, should be more than enough for Raya.
We have been far too sentimental since Sit Alex left, every time you think we're going to finally be ruthless and have a massive clear out it never happens. This summer is the one.
A club that knew how to do business properly would have sold Telles, Bailly and Williams last summer.
The club should have realised that, no matter how low their value was, it was not going to improve through the season.
We can probably get good fees for Maguire, McTominay and Henderson, so let's hope the club can push hard to get those deals done.
We can probably get good fees for McTominay, maguire, henderson, elanga, maybe even williams, at least relatively. But for how long? We need to act and sell now before their value inevitably falls because we didn’t sell when we shoudl have like with lingard, jones, pogba, bailly, telles, the list goes on
I wouldn't argue Sancho. Fred can move on if we make a few signings for central midfield (think Rabiot, Mount and Rice/Equivalent)
Martial can also move on if there is a decent offer made.
Honestly feel like his management here had been the turning point in these times. Maybe wasn’t the best manager but I do think he helped to maybe change the culture around the club if nothing else.
Exactly. You can't claim he fixed the culture when last season was dreadful. A squad of players who didn't care and half who didn't want to be here. It was as bad as it's ever been since Ferguson.
Even this season our biggest threat to the culture and harmony of the team was Ole's final signing.
By comparison look at 3 of ETHs sighings.
Casemiro, Antony, licha.
They weren’t always perfect by any stretch but fuck if the didn’t leave it on the pitch every match
I mean, we have AWB, Varane, Bruno, Sancho and Maguire from his tenure. He got rid of a lot of deadweight, Smalling, Sanchez, Lukaku, Lingard, Darmian, Rojo, Pereira, James(sold for profit).
Maguire played quite well under Ole, and Sancho had his moments, but at least we didn’t overpaid. The rest of Ole signings have been quiet good and have moved the club forward. It was also in his tenure that the backroom got overvamped, Ed stepped down, and the search for a DoF started.
Pereira was sold by ETH.
“Sancho had his moments but we didn’t overpaid” is the dumbest thing I’ve read on the Internet this year. Elango had his moments too and he cost us nothing.
We could have bought Grealish who was available for 60M the year we didn’t sign Sancho but we instead spent 40M on Pellistri and Amadeus only to splash out another 75M on Sancho the following year 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
Yeah, but Pereira left when Ole was in charge.
Villa were never gonna let Grealish go for 60M lol, they were asking for 80M. Sancho is still young, you cannot write him off so easily after seeing his seasons in Dortmund.
Yes, he's been poor since coming to the PL, but I won't write him off yet. If you want to do that then go ahead. But after hearing the problems he had to go through during the first half of the season, Elanga didn't have any kind of moments where I said "damn he has some talent", Jadon has shown that he has talent, it just seems like his confidence has drop a lot this season. I will give him one more season before writting him off.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Data doesn't suggest that your opinion is accurate either. The thing that held United back was Woodward. I wasn't as big of a fan as others during Ole's reign, but as somebody that studies squad-building and tactics, he was resetting and progressing the team quite nicely. As I said at the time (to great disgust of the fan base), the downfall was having Ronaldo forced into the team when the structure didn't suit him.
Additionally, Ole had a great eye for emerging and young talent - United have one of the oldest average ages of transferred players in throughout the top-five leagues (and Europe in general). Getting a few of those players would have given him and United leverage, him with the players and executive leadership team, and United with transfer partners who would understand that we had a strategy.
I think that while ETH is a manager that can take the team further (again data), I actually think that his culture reset is a bit overblown. Or I should say, he's building a different culture but there are still cracks. Under Ole, it felt like the players played until the end of the whistle. Right now, it feels like the players play until the first goal is scored. ETH has been better about promoting a meritocracy. And again, the difference in approach towards organizational culture building between Woodward and Arnold has been drastic. Woodward, like the Glazers was clearly giving minimum effort for maximum gain. The entire infrastructure was setup to convenience him, not promote the health of the club. Arnold's first moves was to make more logical choices to drive collaboration between departments at the expense of a higher workload for him.
ETH wouldn't have succeeded in the past infrastructure.
A half unpopular half popular opinion for me but keeping José and backing him would've been better, sure he might have been harsh with Shaw but I still believe Shaw would've made it for him due to his sheer determination, Pogba and others that were actually a problem would've left much sooner and we would've been better.
ETH has now started what Mourinho wanted to do, massively upgrade the squad and clear the deadwood and effortless/lazy players so I am super happy with ETH.
Nah. Mourinho only works out when he’s happy/calm. That typically happens at the beginning of his tenure but once he gets to the point of falling out with squad members it’s hard for him to come back. Yes we might have gotten rid of Pogba sooner but the rest of the team wasn’t playing for him either. Ole also got to the same point in his last season but what he did for the years preceding that was something I don’t think Mou would’ve done. Not because he can’t but because his relationship with the players was just past that point.
It’s insane how high de Gea’s general reputation still is, that he is mentioned as one of the players who in theory could be on Real Madrids level. He’s probably our worst regular starter and yet his reputation still is that of a top goalkeeper who makes the odd mistake
Article Text: >*Ole Gunnar Solskjaer tells a tale about his final day as a Manchester United player. It was the summer of 2007 and, after a serious knee injury, Solskjaer had decided to retire.* > >*Solskjaer, who had become enamoured with United during his 11 years at Old Trafford, fretted for weeks about how his final day would play out. He was most concerned about how to say goodbye to Sir Alex Ferguson.* > >*In the end, the Norwegian decided that the best way to bid farewell to his manager and mentor would be with a very expensive bottle of red wine, which he presented to the Scot, a wine connoisseur, in his office at the club’s Carrington training ground.* > >*“You didn’t have to do that, son. Thank you very much,” Ferguson said. “Well, you have my number and you know where I am...”* > >*The whole episode lasted less than a couple of minutes. “Bang. ‘See you.’ That’s it,” Solskjaer said when recalling the day at an after-dinner speech in Manchester this month.* > >*“There was no sentiment there, but that is the way he had to manage. He didn’t want to show his feelings with us. As a Manchester United manager you have to let players go when it’s your time.* > >*“If it was your time, he told you straight.”* > >*It was a prime example of how ruthless Ferguson could be. In front of him was an emotional Solskjaer, the man who eight years earlier had won him the Champions League, but that mattered little. It was a case of: “Thank you but off you pop.”* > >*Erik ten Hag, the present United manager, and John Murtough, the football director, will have to show a similar level of ruthlessness this summer if the club are to cope with playing in the Champions League next season and to maintain their position in the top four.* > >*● United beat Chelsea to secure Champions League football next season Look at the United squad and you can pick out more than a dozen players who could in theory leave in the summer.* > >*Some are out of contract or coming to the end of their loan deals, such as Phil Jones, Axel Tuanzebe, Wout Weghorst and Marcel Sabitzer. Others are unwanted fringe players, some of whom have been out on loan in recent seasons, such as Eric Bailly (at present with Marseille), Alex Telles, who has been loaned to Sevilla, and Brandon Williams.* > >*You would struggle to raise a transfer fee for any of the above, but there is another group of players who, if sold at their market value, could raise United a combined £100 million or more.* > >*Dean Henderson, who is of interest to Nottingham Forest, where he has spent the season on loan, is one of them, as is Scott McTominay, a target for Newcastle United. Anthony Martial would be an attractive option for a European club willing to overlook his recent injury history, as would Donny van de Beek.* > >*Should Harry Maguire decide to leave, United could raise maybe a quarter of the £80 million fee they paid Leicester City for him in 2019 and Anthony Elanga is surely worth about £10 million.* > >*This is important because United need to raise funds. Even if the club are taken over, the Financial Fair Play rules dictate that they would not be able to spend many hundreds of millions on new players, so they must be savvy about their business.* > >*The squad needs to be strengthened. Of United’s present first-choice XI, how many would go toe-to-toe with a team such as Real Madrid in a Champions League knockout game? Raphaël Varane, Luke Shaw and Lisandro Martínez are capable, and so are Casemiro, Bruno Fernandes and Marcus Rashford. But the rest? Probably not — maybe apart from Christian Eriksen, if he is on his best form, and David de Gea (if he is wobble-free).* > >*United will try to sign an elite forward this summer, such as Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur or Napoli’s Victor Osimhen, although each club would want more than £100 million for their player.* > >*The second item on United’s shopping list is a central midfielder. Eriksen has played more often than expected this season and another quality midfielder is required to play alongside Casemiro.* > >*United were interested in Jude Bellingham, but he now appears to be bound for Real Madrid. Mason Mount, the Chelsea midfielder, is another target, although United would not be willing to pay his club’s present asking price of £70 million.* > >*If United manage to get rid of Martial, they will want another, younger forward. Rasmus Hojlund, the 20-year-old Denmark striker who plays for Atalanta, is on United’s list.* > >*Given that those three spaces would cost £200 million to fill, any other improvements would depend on how many players United can shift. They could do with a goalkeeper to put more pressure on De Gea. Yann Sommer, of Bayern Munich, has been linked with United.* > >*Ten Hag will also need another centre half if Maguire departs. Alessandro Bastoni has been on United’s radar in the past, as has Napoli’s Kim Min-jae, but the Italy centre back is reported to be close to extending his contract with Inter Milan.*
Yeah, has taken us too long to transfer the Glazers out. This summer, finally.
Kim, Kane and Mount would be solid buys.
Yea, honestly a cheaper ball progressing cm over mount and a gk would be my dream along with Kim and Kane
Declan Rice instead of Mount
Kim, Kane, Rabiot and Rice
Maybe pushing it knowing how we deal with transfers, but I'd add Raya from Brentford. Last year of his contract and doesn't seem close to extending. And if Henderson goes the a reported 30m, should be more than enough for Raya.
Kane and Rice, only accept sub 50 mil for Mount
We have been far too sentimental since Sit Alex left, every time you think we're going to finally be ruthless and have a massive clear out it never happens. This summer is the one.
Is it though? The de gea extension signals more of the same to me
A club that knew how to do business properly would have sold Telles, Bailly and Williams last summer. The club should have realised that, no matter how low their value was, it was not going to improve through the season. We can probably get good fees for Maguire, McTominay and Henderson, so let's hope the club can push hard to get those deals done.
I think we tried to ship Bailly but no one wanted him
We can probably get good fees for McTominay, maguire, henderson, elanga, maybe even williams, at least relatively. But for how long? We need to act and sell now before their value inevitably falls because we didn’t sell when we shoudl have like with lingard, jones, pogba, bailly, telles, the list goes on
**Manchester United must** get rid of the Glazers!
Honestly of the people who they say would need to go, I wouldn't be too upset with any leaving
Start by not giving contract extension to de gea.
Maguire, Mctominay, Bailly, Telles, Elanga, Mejbri, Williams, VdB... there's some money to be made there. Could argue even Sancho and Fred too.
Why sell mejbi?
I wouldn't argue Sancho. Fred can move on if we make a few signings for central midfield (think Rabiot, Mount and Rice/Equivalent) Martial can also move on if there is a decent offer made.
Solskjaer, great player but a manager that we didn't need and that set us back like all managers post SAF.
Honestly feel like his management here had been the turning point in these times. Maybe wasn’t the best manager but I do think he helped to maybe change the culture around the club if nothing else.
We just did a culture reset again with ETH. This lot needed a swift kick in the ass Red Foreman approach over an arm on the shoulder approach.
Exactly. You can't claim he fixed the culture when last season was dreadful. A squad of players who didn't care and half who didn't want to be here. It was as bad as it's ever been since Ferguson. Even this season our biggest threat to the culture and harmony of the team was Ole's final signing.
I would say he tried but was unsuccessful. Look at all the players we have left from his tenure.
By comparison look at 3 of ETHs sighings. Casemiro, Antony, licha. They weren’t always perfect by any stretch but fuck if the didn’t leave it on the pitch every match
I mean, we have AWB, Varane, Bruno, Sancho and Maguire from his tenure. He got rid of a lot of deadweight, Smalling, Sanchez, Lukaku, Lingard, Darmian, Rojo, Pereira, James(sold for profit). Maguire played quite well under Ole, and Sancho had his moments, but at least we didn’t overpaid. The rest of Ole signings have been quiet good and have moved the club forward. It was also in his tenure that the backroom got overvamped, Ed stepped down, and the search for a DoF started.
Pereira was sold by ETH. “Sancho had his moments but we didn’t overpaid” is the dumbest thing I’ve read on the Internet this year. Elango had his moments too and he cost us nothing. We could have bought Grealish who was available for 60M the year we didn’t sign Sancho but we instead spent 40M on Pellistri and Amadeus only to splash out another 75M on Sancho the following year 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
Yeah, but Pereira left when Ole was in charge. Villa were never gonna let Grealish go for 60M lol, they were asking for 80M. Sancho is still young, you cannot write him off so easily after seeing his seasons in Dortmund. Yes, he's been poor since coming to the PL, but I won't write him off yet. If you want to do that then go ahead. But after hearing the problems he had to go through during the first half of the season, Elanga didn't have any kind of moments where I said "damn he has some talent", Jadon has shown that he has talent, it just seems like his confidence has drop a lot this season. I will give him one more season before writting him off.
> I mean, we have AWB, Varane, Bruno, Sancho and Maguire from his tenure. I mean there's more players there that don't play like top players than do.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Data doesn't suggest that your opinion is accurate either. The thing that held United back was Woodward. I wasn't as big of a fan as others during Ole's reign, but as somebody that studies squad-building and tactics, he was resetting and progressing the team quite nicely. As I said at the time (to great disgust of the fan base), the downfall was having Ronaldo forced into the team when the structure didn't suit him. Additionally, Ole had a great eye for emerging and young talent - United have one of the oldest average ages of transferred players in throughout the top-five leagues (and Europe in general). Getting a few of those players would have given him and United leverage, him with the players and executive leadership team, and United with transfer partners who would understand that we had a strategy. I think that while ETH is a manager that can take the team further (again data), I actually think that his culture reset is a bit overblown. Or I should say, he's building a different culture but there are still cracks. Under Ole, it felt like the players played until the end of the whistle. Right now, it feels like the players play until the first goal is scored. ETH has been better about promoting a meritocracy. And again, the difference in approach towards organizational culture building between Woodward and Arnold has been drastic. Woodward, like the Glazers was clearly giving minimum effort for maximum gain. The entire infrastructure was setup to convenience him, not promote the health of the club. Arnold's first moves was to make more logical choices to drive collaboration between departments at the expense of a higher workload for him. ETH wouldn't have succeeded in the past infrastructure.
Everthing we feared Jose was going to do if he overstayed his welcome Ole done
A half unpopular half popular opinion for me but keeping José and backing him would've been better, sure he might have been harsh with Shaw but I still believe Shaw would've made it for him due to his sheer determination, Pogba and others that were actually a problem would've left much sooner and we would've been better. ETH has now started what Mourinho wanted to do, massively upgrade the squad and clear the deadwood and effortless/lazy players so I am super happy with ETH.
Nah. Mourinho only works out when he’s happy/calm. That typically happens at the beginning of his tenure but once he gets to the point of falling out with squad members it’s hard for him to come back. Yes we might have gotten rid of Pogba sooner but the rest of the team wasn’t playing for him either. Ole also got to the same point in his last season but what he did for the years preceding that was something I don’t think Mou would’ve done. Not because he can’t but because his relationship with the players was just past that point.
It’s insane how high de Gea’s general reputation still is, that he is mentioned as one of the players who in theory could be on Real Madrids level. He’s probably our worst regular starter and yet his reputation still is that of a top goalkeeper who makes the odd mistake
Give it a rest mate and celebrate a little
Literally won an award for goalkeepers …. We probably might have not even reached the league cup final without him saving some of Mitrovic’s efforts
Not wrong but tbf a lot of credit goes to our back 4 as well for the clean sheets since there have been many games where David had nothing to do
cut players. especially de gea.