Transfer Spending &* Squad Costs

[El Jefecito]

Yes, because that's what i'm doing...

It's actually quite simple, but i'll spell it out to you.

Over the years, we've continually made £20m amounts stretch across 5 players. Result - we have not enough top players.

So, THIS summer, what i'm saying is that it's time we stopped buying the average nobodies because our squad is deep enough, and spend the money on TOP players.

Something i'm yet to be convinced will happen, but we'll see.

Your turn to once again tell me that i've said something completely different to what i'm actually saying

ha ha ha. Sound the retreat. That was the argument you are having with someone else mate.

This was an entirely different argument.

But hey I guess you have too many arguments going on to keep your head straight

[Manofthebog]

Me missing the point?

You acknowledge that we have enough average squad fillers and that we need to sign world class players.

And then, when i say if we have £20m, we should buy world class players, and only one if that's all we can get with it, as opposed to 4 average squad fillers - and you disagree???

I've said nothing about bottomless pits of money, i've said that we dont need anymore average squad fillers because we have plenty and the difference between us and the top two is that we're short of a couple more world class players.

I'm basically saying the same as you, but your way of avoiding the problem of having average squaddies is to buy more average squaddies?

You're strange.

You keep using the amount of money Rafa has spent, relatively to the mancs, stick, and beating rafa over the head with it, and you say you haven't got an agenda against him.

You keep saying we always buy "squad" players without actually acknowledging that in order to buy top quality players we need more money than we have.

Each "squad" player Rafa has brought has been an inprovement on the out going "squad" player.

I can see rafa's thinking here, and I'd rather get one quality player, plus better squad players, than one expensive world class player per window.

Something that we've always done.

If I'm strange, I wouldn't want to live in your world.

[El Jefecito]

This is our squad from 03-04.

Did we need to buy squad players since Rafa has been here. I think so. When next season comes around I doubt that we'll have more than 4 of those players on our books.

 Jerzy Dudek
 Paul Harrison
 Paul Jones
 Chris Kirkland
 Patrice Luzi
 Markus Babbel
 Igor Biscan
 Jamie Carragher
 Steve Finnan
 Stephane Henchoz
 Sami Hyypia
 Jon Otsemobor
 John Arne Riise
 Djimi Traore
 Gregory Vignal
 Bruno Cheyrou
 Salif Diao
 Steven Gerrard
 Dietmar Hamann
 Harry Kewell
 Anthony Le Tallec
 Danny Murphy
 Richie Partridge
 Darren Potter
 Vladimir Smicer
 John Welsh
 Milan Baros
 El Hadji Diouf
 Emile Heskey
 Neil Mellor
 Michael Owen
 Florent S Pongolle

What would todays squad look like if we'd only bought one 20m player a season

[Manofthebog]

This is our squad from 03-04.

Did we need to buy squad players since Rafa has been here. I think so. When next season comes around I doubt that we'll have more than 4 of those players on our books.

*Jerzy Dudek
*Paul Harrison
*Paul Jones
*Chris Kirkland
*Patrice Luzi
*Markus Babbel
*Igor Biscan
*Jamie Carragher
*Steve Finnan
*Stephane Henchoz
*Sami Hyypia
*Jon Otsemobor
*John Arne Riise
*Djimi Traore
*Gregory Vignal
*Bruno Cheyrou
*Salif Diao
*Steven Gerrard
*Dietmar Hamann
*Harry Kewell
*Anthony Le Tallec
*Danny Murphy
*Richie Partridge
*Darren Potter
*Vladimir Smicer
*John Welsh
*Milan Baros
*El Hadji Diouf
*Emile Heskey
*Neil Mellor
*Michael Owen
*Florent S Pongolle

Wrong, wrong wrong.


In the world of DJS we should have blown all our transfer budget on say, Zidane.

[Ketario]

We'd have an awesome fives team.

[Manofthebog]

We'd have an awesome fives team.

Thanks for your input, caller.

[Whelan5]

That's my point - Fergie did inherit them becuase they were already in Man U's youth system, he didn't have to go and get them to supliment a **** youth policy.
Yes he had the bollocks to play them but that's not rocket science, even benders like Phil Neville have over 50 caps for their country and have had successful club careers without being a 'superstar' like Beckham.

It's not hard to pick players if they're good enough.
It's a seperate argument but who have Utd brought through since Fergie has been manager that came to the club after he started??
Wes Brown was a couple of years behind but he was in the squad in 99, how many youth players has Fergie brought through that have played over 50 1st team games?
Not many, I can't think of one of the top of my head. He was lucky inheriting a massively gifted generation of young players that were at the club at the right time.

Mate I think you are mistaken, Ferguson made it a priority when he arrived at OT to revive the youth system and he was responsible for recruiting those players. As I said they were about 11 when he joined and clubs don't have players on their books that young, Giggs was either on City's books or about to sign for them when Ferguson stepped in. I hate the man but he has to be given credit where it is due.

Since these players came through their youth system has been pretty poor with only Brown, O'Shea and Fletcher I can think of coming through, and non of them are anything more than squad fillers.

[Reece]

Mate I think you are mistaken, Ferguson made it a priority when he arrived at OT to revive the youth system and he was responsible for recruiting those players. As I said they were about 11 when he joined and clubs don't have players on their books that young, Giggs was either on City's books or about to sign for them when Ferguson stepped in. I hate the man but he has to be given credit where it is due.

Since these players came through their youth system has been pretty poor with only Brown, O'Shea and Fletcher I can think of coming through, and non of them are anything more than squad fillers.

Rafa has completely revamped our youth system as well, but it is far early to tell if it will have a similar effect. It took Fergie a fair while to achieve anything at the scum, and I'm going to be interested to see what Rafa can do with some of the promising yougsters we appear to have.

[kemm1]

but Insua is considered to be ready.

By who?

[kemm1]

This is our squad from 03-04.

Did we need to buy squad players since Rafa has been here. I think so. When next season comes around I doubt that we'll have more than 4 of those players on our books.

*Jerzy Dudek
*Paul Harrison
*Paul Jones
*Chris Kirkland
*Patrice Luzi
*Markus Babbel
*Igor Biscan
*Jamie Carragher
*Steve Finnan
*Stephane Henchoz
*Sami Hyypia
*Jon Otsemobor
*John Arne Riise
*Djimi Traore
*Gregory Vignal
*Bruno Cheyrou
*Salif Diao
*Steven Gerrard
*Dietmar Hamann
*Harry Kewell
*Anthony Le Tallec
*Danny Murphy
*Richie Partridge
*Darren Potter
*Vladimir Smicer
*John Welsh
*Milan Baros
*El Hadji Diouf
*Emile Heskey
*Neil Mellor
*Michael Owen
*Florent S Pongolle

What would todays squad look like if we'd only bought one 20m player a season

Fcuking hell, didn't realize that, talk about starting from scratch.

Rafa has built a brand new team AND academy and is doing a fantastic job IMO, I really can't understand why he gets so much stick sometimes.

[Reece]

By who?

AFII

To be fair, I'd like to see him given more of a chance now in the first team, hopefully for the last two games.

[Reece]

Fcuking hell, didn't realize that, talk about starting from scratch.

Rafa has built a brand new team AND academy and is doing a fantastic job IMO, I really can't understand why he gets so much stick sometimes.

Unfortunately a lot of fans today don't realise that Rome wasn't built in a day, and that it actually takes time to build a consistently successful team. Unless you have the money of Chelsea of course.

[The Birdman]

Mate I think you are mistaken, Ferguson made it a priority when he arrived at OT to revive the youth system and he was responsible for recruiting those players. As I said they were about 11 when he joined and clubs don't have players on their books that young, Giggs was either on City's books or about to sign for them when Ferguson stepped in. I hate the man but he has to be given credit where it is due.

Since these players came through their youth system has been pretty poor with only Brown, O'Shea and Fletcher I can think of coming through, and non of them are anything more than squad fillers.

I was on a pro clubs books at 11 and went onto play league football albeit below the Premier League so if clubs in the lower leagues have players affiliated before 11 then I'm sure Man U do, one of my old team mates works for Chelsea as a under 8's coach so to say Fergie brought these lads to United would be giving credit where it's not due.
Beckham was a mascot in 1986 the year Fergie took over so I don't think his priority then was an 11 year old cockney.

However we've digressed from the main point which is Rafa has had to spend a proportion of his annual transfer kitty filling out the squad.
Hopefully Rafa will still be our manager in 4 years time and we'll be able to afford to spend all the money on 1 or 2 players as Insua, Nemeth, Plessis et al will be trusted squad players or more.

[Skillz]

Leto: 1.85M
SpeedyG: 1.5M
Lucas: 5.8M

Could of course be offset by Park: 4M, ...

It's not Rafa's buys that held/hold us back. Le Tallec is still on the payroll, his 6th year! Still ****ing amazes me that we paid such high wages for so long to so many unproven players.

Why is Le Tallec still on our wage roll, because noone will pay anything like what we gave him at 16 years of age.

[Roboklopp]

This is our squad from 03-04.

Did we need to buy squad players since Rafa has been here. I think so. When next season comes around I doubt that we'll have more than 4 of those players on our books.

*Jerzy Dudek
*Paul Harrison
*Paul Jones
*Chris Kirkland
*Patrice Luzi
*Markus Babbel
*Igor Biscan
*Jamie Carragher
*Steve Finnan
*Stephane Henchoz
*Sami Hyypia
*Jon Otsemobor
*John Arne Riise
*Djimi Traore
*Gregory Vignal
*Bruno Cheyrou
*Salif Diao
*Steven Gerrard
*Dietmar Hamann
*Harry Kewell
*Anthony Le Tallec
*Danny Murphy
*Richie Partridge
*Darren Potter
*Vladimir Smicer
*John Welsh
*Milan Baros
*El Hadji Diouf
*Emile Heskey
*Neil Mellor
*Michael Owen
*Florent S Pongolle

What would todays squad look like if we'd only bought one 20m player a season

That really is an eye-opener & shows exaclty how much Rafa has built us up & what a great job he has done in doing so. What I like is that he seems to get money back for sales, which GH never did. He also gets rid quick of players that dont work out to minimise the damage financially & on the pitch/bench. GH's purchases look really awful in retrospect, despite bringing in the odd brilliant player- Didi, Sami, Marcus & Stephan for example.

However, whilst I acknowledge that building up the squad bit by bit in the past has been necessary post-GH, I do think we need at least 1 top top player up top to take us to the next level (ideally 2-3) & we should be focussed on that in the window, because our squad is sufficiently developed to do that now. We (sadly) might have to go cheap again for the fullbacks to ensure that we are able to splash out a but more up top.

Whilst I think we are really weak in FB positions & need to look into that in the long run, in terms of next season I think we can improve massively if we bring in solid but unspectacular FBs at a minimal cost (a fit version of Fabs would be ideal) & a top attacker at siginificant outlay, rather than just another option such as Valencia (not taking the rumours as fact, just using him for example purposes only).

Personally, I dont want to see too many changes, because that destablises, but Rafa knows best.