There's a middle ground though between the lunacy of Woodward and stretching the budget across all areas of the squad that need attention. Casemiro carried us in so many games last season and we needed players anyway before replacing him.fat maradona wrote: ↑2 months agoYou are starting to see the structure Wilcox & Vivell are putting together. A lot of fans still want the Woodward approach to transfers and at the same time bemoan how shit they were and how much money we wasted.Remi Moses wrote: ↑2 months ago I think the Ineos approach to transfers is exactly right. Hold exploratory talks across the market, not because they are randomly chasing ten midfielders at once, but because that is how you build a complete picture. You need to know the fee, wage expectations, agent demands, injury risk, contract situation, player appetite, selling-club pressure, and whether the structure of a deal is actually possible.
Only then can you judge value properly. A player might be the best footballing fit but terrible value at £85m (Fernandes). Another might be only 85% of the player stylistically, but good value at £38m (Ederson) with lower wages or better durability. That does not mean United are not ambitious. It means they are weighing football quality against cost, risk and squad fit.
If these criteria are applied to every incoming and outgoing, they become far more efficient with their capital. Consistent, well-thought-through decisions compound over time. That is how you build success, not by "winning" every headline deal, but by repeatedly making the right value decisions.
I read that the recruitment team aren't looking for a specialist DM/no.6. They want midfielders that can play across the middle and provide versatility and you can see that in who we are linked with.
If they can go and get Joao Gomes (yeh yeh, I sound like a broken record), add that to Mount offering a bit more this season and a couple of the yoot getting more minutes, it'll free up money to get that LB and 2nd striker we need.
If Ederson really is off and we go into the season with Santos, Mainoo, Mount and some kids, we are risking going backwards. That's not to say we should spunk money on an overhyped player, just that real quality costs more than we are seemingly prepared to pay.
We can all sit here now in the summer and say we like this approach but when we lose 3-4 on the bounce and Carrick is under pressure, we'll be bemoaning it. That's not even accounting for injuries. Mount is forever injured and Mainoo is the type who has his 1-2 a season. Can you imagine the boiled piss if we're going into a derby with Tyler Fletcher and Bruno in midfield and Cunha jobbing at 10.
IMO we need to put all our eggs into the midfield basket and any other positions can be filled with punts/yoot. Spread it too thin and we'll crash out of the CL early and finish 5th or 6th, then it's back to having to spend big to get back into the CL again.
