The old Man Utd Thread

[Rev]

I think it's good business at c £29m for DDG.

What can you do if he doesn't want to sign another contract?! When you say "allow him to get so close to the end of his contract" - I'm not sure what anyone could do to persuade him to stay, it's been clear for a while he's been set on moving to Real.

He should have been given a 6 year contract on the day Ferguson left, regardless of how much it cost in wages, which wouldn't even have been that much as there was no link to Real there and there was no reason anyone would suspect Man Utd wouldn't be in the Champion's League.

It's easier with hindsight, but it was massively clear even at that point he was the most important player in the squad long-term and not giving him whatever he wanted then was just being tight, almost certainly based on an assumption he'd never want to leave.

[boxoctosis]

Who would you sell him to? Someone would want to buy him and he'd want to play for them.

I think he's been set on Real for a long time and all the tea in India wouldn't persuade him to stay. Therefore, £29m is a decent fee for him.

[Rev]

If you ignore the massive list of missed opportunities to get a better deal in the past, I don't think it would have been possible to get more than £29m today. So in that regard, yes, it's a decent price.

[boxoctosis]

Such as? Maybe I've not been paying attention (very possible).

[Majora]

Only 6 members of United's title winning team in 2013 are still at the club

image.jpg

It's crazy how much has changed at the club in just a couple of years. One of the great things about United was that there was always a great amount of consistency from year to year. Not just with Fergie being there forever but with there being a strong core of key players. It was extremely rare that we would get rid of a large number of players in one go and then splurge on a load of new additions. And I honestly can't remember us ever being so haphazard and, to be honest, a bit embarrassing in the transfer market. Sure there were sagas (Snjeider anyone?) but nothing like what we're like now.

I wonder what Fergie makes of it all. People slag off that 2013 squad but they won the league comfortably and were a shitty red card decision away from potentially beating Real Madrid in the CL. Some of those player's time was definitely up but what's happened since Fergie left does seem a bit of a scorched earth policy at times.

I don't know what to make of it all to be honest, and that's not even getting into Van Gaal and his 'philosophy' which was meant to take 8 weeks to bed-in, then a few months, and now a year later we're a dull possession-heavy team with our pace and edge sanded away.

[feltmonkey]

Sell him last summer for twice what you'd get for him now, since you're resigned to losing him anyway. Or deal with it earlier this summer instead of stringing it along for so long that you find yourself in a position where you have no choice but to accept whatever Real offer because you've only got a couple of hours left to shift him - which is exactly what Real have been waiting for all summer. They've totally played you.

Hang on, this is complete rubbish. Real have been offering around £12m for him up until now. It's more like the opposite has happened - they have been left with no choice but to up their offer to closer to what we were asking.

[Rev]

Contract, as I said before. Selling last year or even at the start of this window, as TTK said. But generally it's not been packaged in a way that make it appealing to Real Madrid, it's like they've never seen how they approach the transfer market before. They don't just want their squad to benefit from having a great keeper, they want to be seen to buy the best keeper in the world and they'll pay to do that. Dragging it out and dropping him from the team saying he's not got the right mentality...They don't want that. Announcing they were happy for him to run down his contract showed how annoyed and embarrassed they were by it all.

Man Utd started the summer saying that they wanted to break the record for the highest fee paid for a goalkeeper, which was set in 2001, and they didn't even manage that. Asking for an extra £4m from Real Madrid isn't difficult, but they clearly didn't want to be seen to break the record after the process they'd been dragged through when they'd normally be delighted to break such a record as it offers good headlines.

It's all just very amateurish.

[Rev]

Hang on, this is complete rubbish. Real have been offering around £12m for him up until now. It's more like the opposite has happened - they have been left with no choice but to up their offer to closer to what we were asking.

There is no way that they ever expected to pay that. They were just taking the piss.

[feltmonkey]

Yes they were taking the piss. So why is that United's fault? How does that translate to "United missed an opportunity to sell him for twice what they got today?" Why should we package the deal as "appealing to Real Madrid?"

Selling last year would have meant no Champion's League qualification.

This whole deal has been depressingly inevitable, but that doesn't mean the club shouldn't put up a bit of a fight. The whole Ramos bullshit was calculated to cost Madrid some money by unsettling a player they cannot sell so they ended up having to pay him higher wages than they wanted to. In hindsight, we should have tied him down to a long-term contract after we won the league, but in fairness, we don't know whether the club was trying to do just that, or whether De Gea would have signed anyway. He's clearly had his heart set on Real Madrid, and he may have been thinking about running his contract down even then.

Anyway, moving on from the invasion of Arsenal fans telling us off for our misadventures in the transfer market (which is a bit rich ) what do we think of Navas? He was amazing for Costa Rica in the World Cup, wasn't he? What's he done since then?

[boxoctosis]

Contract, as I said before. Selling last year or even at the start of this window, as TTK said. But generally it's not been packaged in a way that make it appealing to Real Madrid, it's like they've never seen how they approach the transfer market before. They don't just want their squad to benefit from having a great keeper, they want to be seen to buy the best keeper in the world and they'll pay to do that. Dragging it out and dropping him from the team saying he's not got the right mentality...They don't want that. Announcing they were happy for him to run down his contract showed how annoyed and embarrassed they were by it all.

Man Utd started the summer saying that they wanted to break the record for the highest fee paid for a goalkeeper, which was set in 2001, and they didn't even manage that. Asking for an extra £4m from Real Madrid isn't difficult, but they clearly didn't want to be seen to break the record after the process they'd been dragged through when they'd normally be delighted to break such a record as it offers good headlines.

It's all just very amateurish.

That's an excellent 'massive list', thank you.

[toythatkills]

Hang on, this is complete rubbish. Real have been offering around £12m for him up until now. It's more like the opposite has happened - they have been left with no choice but to up their offer to closer to what we were asking.

Of course they had a choice. They only had to wait four months and they could sign him for fuck all. What they've done instead is mess you around all summer and fob you off with a goalkeeper that neither of you actually really want and way less money than you wanted as well.

Your negotiators have done a pretty rubbish job here. Like, they tried to call Real's bluff all summer with this "we're not selling him" stuff but it was so transparent that even the reporters at Metro saw through it. You were never keeping De Gea, everyone knew it, so you should have got it done months ago instead of letting Madrid take the piss with £12m offers so you're all like "wow, such business, very good" when you get £20m+ and Navas, who I can't imagine would have been your top goalkeeping target this summer had you actually not let them fuck you around for so long.

You've got as good a deal as you probably could have got on deadline day, but it shouldn't have come to that, and you could have had a better deal almost every step of the way if you'd been stronger.

[feltmonkey]

Not if they were refusing to offer it, we couldn't.

[toythatkills]

Not if they were refusing to offer it, we couldn't.

That's where you have to have stronger negotiators.

[Liamness]

(picture of Januzaj holding a BvB shirt)

Eh, I still don't know what to think of this. If he plays, he'll certainly learn a lot and come back a better player. Dortmund play excellent football, and German clubs are tactically much more advanced than in England. But what do Dortmund get out of it? I think there must be an option to make the deal permanent. Which sucks as he's one of the most promising youngsters to come out of our academy in ages.

[Dark Soldier]

If these rumours of us paying closer to 50/60million pounds, sterling, for Martial are true, then I take everything I've posted today back, we're a joke. Also rumours of Rojo maybe going tomorrow.

[feltmonkey]

That's where you have to have stronger negotiators.

As if either of us know the ins and outs of the transfer process.

Anyway, the bottom line is he's gone, and that makes it a dark day for United, as he was definitely our best player. Personally, I'm gutted. It doesn't really matter how much United got for him, it was whether he stayed or went. From a fan point of view, I'd have rather we refused to sell and he went on a free next summer, as at least then we'd get another season of this brilliant keeper in our team. I bear De Gea no ill-will, and I hope he goes on to prove himself to be the best goalkeeper in the world. Like Ronaldo, all you can really feel is gratitude for what he did for the club.

In other news, someone from my 5-a-side team earlier this evening informed me that Martial is "sick in FIFA." So that's good, I guess.

[feltmonkey]

If these rumours of us paying closer to 50/60million pounds, sterling, for Martial are true, then I take everything I've posted today back, we're a joke. Also rumours of Rojo maybe going tomorrow.

Every halfway-reputable source I can find is saying £36m. One or two are saying it could potentially rise to £58m with bonuses, but as those bonuses are things like him being named European footballer of the year, I personally am not worried about them. If he's European footballer of the year material, he'd be worth the higher fee, particularly to get him at such an early stage of his career.

[toythatkills]

Yeah, whoever got the upper hand I guess it's done either way. Maybe it's time to look to the future and talk about how good Navas is.

Is he?

[Dark Soldier]

Every halfway-reputable source I can find is saying £36m. One or two are saying it could potentially rise to £58m with bonuses, but as those bonuses are things like him being named European footballer of the year, I personally am not worried about them. If he's European footballer of the year material, he'd be worth the higher fee, particularly to get him at such an early stage of his career.

Cheers man, my faith in the process was waning there but I'm back on track now

[feltmonkey]

You must have faith in The Process.

Yeah, whoever got the upper hand I guess it's done either way. Maybe it's time to look to the future and talk about how good Navas is.

Is he?

Fuck knows. Here is a Youtubes presentation of his saves, set to terrible music, as is traditional.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IP_LVbDiTQ

As we can see, he has tendancies to:

• Push the ball back out into the middle of the goal.
• Fail to catch shots that are coming straight at him.
• Make fairly straightforward saves look difficult and spectacular.
• Make some absolutely, jaw-droppingly extraordinary saves.

Personally, I hope we make him the number one straight away. It's the only way we're likely to get any entertainment out of the turgid shite we're playing at the moment. We may spend 67% of the game in possession, passing sideways and backwards, but then Navas could flap at a corner before saving a point-blank shot with his teeth and at least we'd have something to remember the match by.

[Rev]

Yeah, whoever got the upper hand I guess it's done either way. Maybe it's time to look to the future and talk about how good Navas is.

Is he?

I'd prefer him to Romero. I'm not sure it's a massive upgrade, but I think it is one.

[Dark Soldier]

Balague saying the papers haven't arrived on time at Real for de Gea. Lol if so, more than likely bollocks though.

[Willow]

Apparently it actually has fallen through

[Bleeders]

Yep. We sent the paperwork over a minute late.

[humdrum]

If it has fallen through will they actually pay to get him in Jan? Or just sign him on a pre contract to get him for nothing in 6 months?

Do you then revert your stance and play him now?

Certainly makes things interesting for you guys.

[Dark Soldier]

I'd play him if he got his head straight, he'll be a mess at the moment if it hasn't happened.

[feltmonkey]

What. The. Fuck.

[Bleeders]

I'll be surprised if Dave plays again. Probably steaming over this, which means Romero being our number one for several months.

Incidentally, it's looking like it'll go through in anycase since we have the TMS receipt proving we sent the documentation before the Spanish deadline.

[DC Lemon]

This club has lost the plot but it's more fun than watching the team play. Proper meltdown stuff.

[humdrum]

Of course it's still Real Madrid.

So I would still guess that it's a fairly high chance that the rules will be bent to accommodate them.

There will be something like a broken fax machine/internet failure/toilet emergency as to why it was sent late and a request for an exception to be made.

Pretty sure it's happened before not in Spain but somewhere.

On the plus side this tops the time you sent 3 pizza delivery guys to negotiate a deal for a herrera coupe of years back.