The College Dropout

Eddie doesn't have to choose the players we sign.

It's also not entirely true. You can always sell players I'm happy for players to stay on and develop. But we can move them on Chris Wood style. I don't think our approach makes a lot of sense. We've prioritised the here and now - immediate success in the summer. But don't want to leverage loans for the here and now.

He's saying what most of us have been saying for at least a year now. Very conservative. Not leveraging some low-hanging fruit to increase revenues "for whatever reason". Squad needs investment to hit targets. Beard asked the right question - are they as driven without Amanda Staveley? The limited and inconclusiv evidence that we have would still suggest "no". Said everything i've been saying for awhile. The conservatism doesn't align with the stated ambition or the needs of the squad. Villa are in a more precarious position with UEFA but have a higher risk appetite which is giving them a decent shot at achieving their goals. If Emery doesn't get CL, it's a failure on him.

I think the top 6 will be the top 6. Can we win that mini-league below? The squad is still desperately short of quality imo. We'll need someone, probably 2 players to really come to the fore if we are to finish 7th or higher. Wissa, Barnes, Gordon, Bruno, Tonali - someone needs to get on some mean form. I was hoping we could bring in someone to provide a bit of a shock to the system.

I expect we'll be playing in the CL until mid-March. Another 4 games in the CL. There will only be 8 games league left to play. We should expect to win 6 of those mind. As a club we are not aggressive so I didn't expect much action. If we intended on giving the CL/Europa a real go, we would've invested for the short-term. We didn't so I don't expect a CL/Europa spot in the league. Maybe not even Europe. If we do secure Europe somehow, it's a great coaching job from Howe.

Xhaka would've been a great signing for us imo. A profile we needed. Experienced. A passer. But we don't seem interested in doing that. I like Mukiele but he's older than what we need although the price was good. Seen he went to Leipzig back in the day. That's the model we should have largely. The best 18-21 pushing 23 we can get.

Why am I excited for this?

Lad that was proud to be at our club, to wear the armband. Leader. So happy for him that he got to Captain us in the Champions League. was at the club for the League Cup win. Thank you Jamaal. Best of luck fella.

Honestly, I should be DoF at Palace. I get the club, the DNA. Lucky fucking escape with that one. Dwight McNeil??????????

Was desperate for us to get some talent in but didn't expect it.

1 or 2 good signings is the difference between no Europe and Europa League.

Nah - you don't come in and immediately upset the beloved manager and the clubs best player. Maybe he did good things at U18 level. But Mitchell did next to nothing of value for first team other than some easier contract renewals

Villa look likely to have 4 or 5 seasons in Europe in a row. I would say their transfer flexibility is a big reason for this consistency. We are not going to match their 1 CL campaign in terms of PL performance. 66 points was great work from them.

Isn’t going t their job or someone else they hire job to pic the transfer committee? How many top clubs does the manager choose the transfer committee?I don’t even Pep has that power

‘Being backed by the board’ in today’s modern game is putting together a transfer committee that gets him the best players. That gets Mo Salah over the managers preference Julian Brandt.

They need to check Mukiele lad for PEDs.

They might get 4 or 5 here

People were saying he was the best midfielder in the league. Better than Bruno. I don’t think they were judging him correctly then. And the over reaction is now the otherway.

You also have to consider we built that great side super quickly - 20 months. 4 windows ending January 2022 - August 2023. It's 2026 and the only people directly involved in signing that squad is Howe and his team, maybe Nickson too. It's not one bad window. June 2024 selling fiasco can be forgiven because we kept the team that won the cup and finished 5th but the Guehi saga and the Mitchell crap was a black eye. And we haven't looked a cohesive and competent outfit in the transfer market since in terms of incomings. Getting £20m for Kelly and bringing Thiaw for £35m is the best we've done.

At the time it felt like Isak leaving was this era of the project officially ending and the start of the team breaking up. Hope i'm wrong.

Aye but you based on historic and predictive revenues, existing salaries you can safely assume Man U still pay their players more money.

Struggling to upgrade Murphy. You talking about replacing Sandro Tonali.

Signing good players is fucking hard man. All this ‘so and so is replaceable’ is annoying to read when weve not definitively improved any starting spot since 2023.

The clubs have to announce how much they pay in wages in their annual reports. In football 95% of it will be footballer wages.

based on real numbers. Will always be 18 months or so out of date. Kieran Maguire has a similar dataset just cba to look. £70m less in wages. Average Man U player rate £2.5m more p/a than ours. £50k ish more per player per week.