Liars!!!

http://www.newsnow.co.uk/cgi/NGoto/158680888?-11193

manutd is the 2nd richest club in the world,yet failed to lure any big names to old trafford this summer,why?is it b'cause they didn't want any players,and SAF is happy with what he's got,if he thinks so,then i think he should be leaving together with the players he sold,we all know what the team lacks,a replacement for roy keane and RVN,the market was full of them,yet we could't get any,again why? i'll tell you why,SAF is mean.as if he is the one who pays,and also his days as a manager are over,this is not 20 yrs ago,this is now,where money talks,if you want success,you pay,simple,being it short term or long term,you must spend. mark my words......... we are not going to win anything this season,an i certainly hope so,not b'cause i don't like manu,no,b'cause for fergie to go as afailure,he should have left when he chose to,he made a big mistake changing his mind. i can't agree with you less,let's get people who love fotball and manutd in the board,we don't need business people who only think on how to make money,even if it means no success on the pitch,they should know that,it's this success that brings money.

very upset red devil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fergie must leave with gil.we need our club back

Dula, I'd be interested to know who these players were that make you declare 'the market was full of them'. There has been very little genuine quality on the market this summer so I'd be interested to see who exactly you had in mind.

Hi Salford Red,let me start with mascherano,diara,viera,gatusso......this is in MF,which we badly need,as for FWs Klose,Ribbery.Treziguet,Kuyt.......these are just the example,honestly i think we should have done better in the market,we wait and see in January,as they say manu buys in winter not in the summer.

You need to be more realistic and start dealing with real life scenarios rather than treating it like championship manager.

Most of the players you list were never available to us even if we wanted them, but lets take the two who we could have bought had we so desired; Trezeguet and Kuyt. Neither provide a better option than we already have even if they adapted to life at OT. Neither are young, and both would cost top dollar, commanding both high transfer fees and wages. In a world of finite resources sinking such a vast sum in a man who would - in the ideal world - be a reserve is simply madness. Moreover you once again would sideline the serious in-house prospect in Rossi, a prospect we know is already getting impatient at lack of chances.

Do we need more bodies upfront? Undoubtedly, but we are not talking about a frontline player. If all goes well Smith will return to his natural role without issue, Rossi will take to the EPL like a duck to water and Saha and Rooney will continue doing what they’ve be doing for years. We don’t need to sink £20million we don’t have on an average - in United terms - player like Kuyt. At a fraction of the cost he’d be ideal, but we simply don’t have the money to waste on such a negligible asset. It would be the Heinze signing all over again. We have limited resources and must spend them where they can make a real difference. It is better by far to keep our powder dry for players who are genuinely better than what we have than just signing run of the mill players for the sake of it. Top class players rarely become available and you need to be able to move for them when they do.

I argued that we badly needed to buy a forward before the deadline, but that was strictly in terms of reserve cover. Bemoan not picking up a Macken by all means. I’ll agree with you 100% there. Letting Rossi go without having anything at all in the stiffs to provide emergency cover was negligent in the extreme.

why worry about strikers when we have scholes, giggs and ronaldo who can play there in case of an emergency.
All better options than a macken or bellion in my opinion

It goes without saying they are better options, but we are talking emergency reserve cover, not first team players. The point is there is absolutely nothing left between the first team and the academy. This would be a problem at the best of times, but with a thin first team it is a potential disaster if we get injuries in that department.

We have to turn to Ronaldo et al as our option if just one player goes down, and considering we are talking about injury prone Saha and suspension prone Rooney that isn’t exactly a rare occurrence. Take out just two or three of our forwards and option midfielders at once and already you are struggling to have an option on the bench. The trouble with banking on Scholes, Giggs and Ronaldo is they are also needed elsewhere.

I’d have no worries if we still had one of Ebanks-Blake or Johnson on the books - although I’d still have major issues with the balance as we’ve previously discussed - but leaving us with nothing at all beneath the first team squad is just plain negligence on Ferguson’s part. Saha, Smith and Rooney might all stay fit and available until Yule, but if they do it is a case of us getting away with it. It is tempting fate; as Newcastle have demonstrated injuries have a nasty habit of turning up where you can least handle them.

I don't think Sir Alex will be renewing Rossi's loan spell @ Newcastle in January. I have a sneaky suspicion that he might even be recalled earlier citing club injury requirements. He'll then be fighting for a place in the first team as he should be.

== When is Michael Owen likely to return for Newcastle? I heard just yesterday that he was flying to the USA for further surgery.

Post surgical rehab is typically twenty weeks, at which point you are generally back to full functionality and it is just a case of getting fit enough for sport. That sees a best case Owen scenario back in training in January, with a potential return to action as early as March within the realms of possibility.


If Newcastle and Owen are sensible he won’t be back this season. The most common error made with ACL injuries is coming back too soon. Trouble is players who do come back in this time frame have a very high failure rate because the knee - or rather the supporting muscles - doesn’t regain sufficient strength to play football. We are seeing the problem to an extent with Heinze at the moment. For players who rely on agility and lots of lateral movement this is even more relevant. You only need look at the three United connected players who all went down with the injury at the same time a few years back. Leeds rushed Sharpe back weeks ahead of our lads and it turned into a career ending injury. Keane and Cooke were forced to go slower, and Keane did make it back near his previous self, but Cooke lost some much needed agility and his career has fizzled out. With Owen’s style it is hardly worth the risk to try and get him ready for a handful of games in the spring.

As mentioned before there hasn't been any indication of a recall clause included in Rossi's loan deal. That could be a problem should anything happen to either Smith, Rooney, or Saha before January.

For Owen's sake I hope they don't bring him back this season. He should be given ample time to recover from a very serious injury.

I am unsure as to what the problem is here. United do not have the divine right to sign anybody. In a market of high transfers and even high salaries, United must be very careful exactly who they do sign, or try to sign.

Fergie has had his hands burnt with crap signings too many times for my liking. He is obviously being more cautious, and rightly so.

Another question you should ask yourself is - Do we actually need to sign half a team?

I can remember the fans saying in 1991 that we had won the European Cup Winners Cup but needed to buy X Y and Z as well as A B and C in order to maintain the momentum.

We didn't. Fergie brought out the famous class of 92 who ran away with the Premiership for the next 12 years, near enough. We now are in the enviable position where we have a similar class in the youth team. They won their own version of the treble last season, as did the class of 92 before them.

We do not need world players as much as you intimate. We have good enough players now - the question is will Fergie use them?

Panic ye not!

While echoing your sentiment I can’t agree with the spin.

Not the best analogy, especially given we actually signed seven - albeit half as trainees - of our key 90s players over the next couple of months (okay, Kanchelskis technically arrived a week before Rotterdam, but few fans knew anything about him and very few of us had gone to Selhurst).

From what I remember of conversations on the Stretty fans were most bothered about our lack of goals, a long term goalkeeper as Bosnich work permit problems had come to light, a replacement for Robbo, a competent right sided midfielder and a left back, plus a bit of depth in light of the upcoming change to the foreigners rule in Europe. It was a long shopping list, but you can hardly claim it wasn’t required. Bar Robbo’s replacement it was all in place before we won the title, and that last piece was added that summer.

Look at our squad that season and count the members who were replaced/sidelined before we began our run: Sealey, Bosnich, Walsh, Donoghy, Blackmore, Anderson, Martin, Webb, Wallace, Phelan, Beardsmore, Ferguson, Robins... add to that McClair being converted to midfield and that is some pretty serious surgery, virtually all done in eighteen months post Rotterdam.

Sure the team of 92 came along and filled the gaping chasm in terms of squad depth, but given none of them were at the club when we went to Rotterdam it was hardly a factor on fan - or Fergie’s - opinion at the time.

Are you joking, or have you seen something in some of the lads I’ve missed? The academy is patchy at best at the moment imo, and certainly nothing close to the absurd strength we had in 92. I'd be interested in exactly which of the lads you had in mind. For the record they didn’t do the treble last year, that was the reserves.

If you had the reserves in mind then I’ve agree there is at least some talent there with decent upside, but still nothing to compare to 92. Moreover development is the real concern. We are not taking them to the next level anymore, and Fergie’s constant refusal to actually play them is leaving us with a load of Liam Millers; very promising talents who reach their early/mid-twenties having barely kicked a ball in anger.

Loans are counter-productive in the long term. All they achieve is the initial blooding, but after that they can actually harm player development. The club taking a player have no interest in developing his weaknesses, they are just concerned with utilising his strengths. Half the reason our youth system is at its most unproductive since The Doc rebuilt it is how little actual coaching our youngsters receive. Instead we are letting them become one dimensional players with gaping holes in their game, making them pretty much useless to ourselves in the long term. I was pleased to see us send a full time coach to Antwerp to at least attempt to address this issue, but the standard of football there is currently way below our requirements.

I shot off on a tangent and forgot to make the point I originally intended... Oh well, blame it on age

I guess Red Devil and I have a somewhat different perspective thanks to our greater age. For us the regular big money signings every summer is very much a recent development. Historically we’ve spent big in splurges, but then have had many summers with little activity to balance the books. For example people refer to us as big spenders quoting transfers like the vast sum spent on Robson, but we didn’t spend another significant sum for the best part of three years! The only pick ups in the interim were bargain basement youngsters like Peter Beardsley and Paul McGrath and cheap out of contract veterans nearing retirement like Arthur Graham and the great Arnold Muhren.

It shows how radically the mindset has changed in recent years that fans are actually bemoaning that we’ve ‘just’ spent millions on an international midfielder and reserve keeper. Many summers have seen as little or less activity at first team level. It is only five years ago that we began to spend vast sums on multiple players every year following the capture of Ruud and Veron. By remarkable coincidence that just happens to be the same time our fortunes turned. Spending big regularly is no guarantee of success, in my opinion it is quite the opposite. A settled and balanced team is always the better option, and that is where fans should be attacking Fergie. We currently have massive player turnover and zero squad balance.

We need to let on-field relationships develop and fill holes in our team rather than make marquee signings year on year. Teams are always better than collections of talented individuals and given Chelsea’s economic power we are always going to be second best if we try and play them at their own game. Leave the uber-expensive marquee signings to the Chelsea’s of this world, and have United just buy what we need. Sadly under Fergie we are doing neither.

What we needed this summer were central midfielders and fergie got us carrick.
We also needed a replacemnt for VDS with foster going out on loan and we got that in kushchak. I would say fergie got us only what we needed and has left largely the same first team squad as last year with the exception of ruud thus giving that group of players the bonding that you speak of.

And if that is all there was on an annual basis I’d not be complaining. Of course it isn’t anything like that. In the last twelve months you also have Evra and Vidic and David Jones joining the first team squad, while purely in terms of on pitch chemistry Alan Smith has swapped positions again, and Ole has only played for any length of time with seven of the lads.

Of our current first team squad half has two seasons or less with the first team. That is very unhealthy.

I'd argue that David Jones has hardly joined the first team, to be honest. Fergie hasn't given him a go for long enough yet.

Not on the pitch of course, but he is a member of the squad during the rest of the week. In terms of dressing room chemistry he is another new face.

I don't have the exact stats to quote from and i can't really be asked looking them up but our 1st team squad is one of the most stable in europe. Over the last three years we have probably had 7 signings and 7/8 departures while liverpool almost matched that this season alone as did chelsea. We have a core of players in gazza, brown, o'shea, silvestre, scholes, giggs, richardson, fletcher, ole who have been around this club a very very long time. Compared to other top clubs like madrid, inter, and chelsea i would say we are light years ahead in terms of players having time to gel with each other

Over the last three seasons we’ve brought in Howard and the current two keepers, Heinze, Evra, Vidic, Miller, Djemba, Kleberson, Ronaldo, Park, Carrick, Bellion, Smith, Saha, Rooney... add to that the in-house promotions, one of whom was Fletch contrary to your assertion. He was only promoted to the first team squad three seasons ago, and will be celebrating the third anniversary of his EPL debut in a couple of weeks. Prior to that he'd only played in two dead rubbers in the ECL at the end of the previous campaign, and the rest of his young career had been spent with the academy and medical staff.

To serve as a reminder here is the list of players who crossed the medal threshold that season and who have subsequently left the club:
Barthez
Beckham
Blanc
Butt
Carroll
Forlan
Fortune
Keane
Phil
Ruud
Veron

Add to that the other first team squad members who took some part in that title triumph, but not enough to qualify for a medal:
Chadwick
May
Pugh
Ricardo
Roche
Stewart

Finally for the sake of completeness those who were unused substitutes in EPL fixtures that year:
Davis
Tierney
Williams

Not much turnover in three years???

I’ll concede that point (although I’d dispute the extent of the difference) but I must point out we don’t want to compare to those clubs do we? It is the train-wreck history of Inter over the past fifteen years those putting forward my argument use to illustrate the point! The immense turnover is the main reason Inter haven’t finished on top of the table for years, and why Real consistently underachieve.

Clubs who constantly have this sort of player turnover can be pigeon-holed as clubs with the ability to buy at will and/or clubs who regularly underachieve. We don’t fit into the former, and we don’t want to be in the latter.

ok i'll admit i was wrong with the stats so lets take 15 in and 15 out over 3 seasons as the correct statistic. That means five signings a season. Not bad considering we struggled to find a midfielder similar to keane, had to replace our goalkeeper and becks and also needed some strikers.

Your point about clubs with this kind of turnover regularly underachieving i disagree with. Look at liverpool who won the ECL two years ago and the FA cup last year or at the current ECL champions Barca, their player turnover has resulted in success on the field.

I am a little dissapointed but I think with the way the team is going we will be fine even without another signing.

We won 4 out of 4 today and still got the likes of Rooney, Scholes, Heinze and Vidic to come into the team. I think we will be fine and I got a good feeling we will get Hargreaves in January.

Good to see Rossi go out on loan as well, the barcodes are a decent team and he will get valuable experience at a Premiership club.