He is the only Chairman to take a mid table team into frequent CL qualification since ffp began. I've asked several times who people want to be the owner or Chairman and no-one ever responds. If you think we built the stadium as a vanity project you are so wrong. It is built the way it is to generate more revenue to build the squad. It is literally the only way to do that without breaking ffp.
Another top player we could have had if ENIC and Levy had any real desire for silverware, the list is endless, Mane, Grealish, Dybala, Willian etc etc, if its not being outbid on wages, its messing around with low ball bids and a refusal to push the boat out, ever.
And here we go again........................... Blame Levy for not buying this or that player . .. If you want to read about it , look elsewhere. For example: https://www.not606.com/threads/transfer-thread-fact-and-fiction.343033/page-867
I definitely think Levy deserves a bollocking and all the blame for the Grealish **** up. That’s a £50m player we could’ve - wait, should've - got for circa £15m-£20m. Steve Bruce even expected the deal to happen. Dybala I don’t blame him for, we had a fee and wages agreed with club and player, the final step was image rights (which isn’t a usual hurdle) but then Juve pulled the plug as they couldn’t find a replacement. Willian is also quite harsh, by all accounts he looked a Tottenham player, I mean he was at Spurs Lodge, had a medical and verbally agreed his deal... Can’t help it if a team comes in at the 11th hour and eclipses what we can offer. Mane’s a tricky one. No doubt its frustrating to know we could’ve signed him but it sounded like he was asking for wages that eclipsed Lloris and Kane, which at that exact time he didn’t warrant. Obviously if we had hindsight to see how good he’d become under Klopp then for sure, we can now bemoan not paying the wages but I do feel that at that very moment, we were somewhat right not to be held to ransom. Whereas now with Fernandes, yeah it’s definitely frustrating we never went that extra mile to get him although I do think Poch deserves to share that blame though, he didn’t seemingly prioritise his signing as highly as Ndombele and Lo Celso, so again with hindsight, most of us right now would probably say we should’ve prioritised Lo Celso and Fernandes. Hudd made a great point though in that Fernandes may not have improved Spurs like he has Utd because our defence would've still been an absolute shambles.
Pretty gutted about this, they're one of the clubs I want to visit as I wanna try a famous Wigan Pie. Gotta love this legend too:
There's certainly been a few ****ups. I can almost excuse Mane, for the reasons you outline, but also because Son is an excellent winger who would probably start for any team in the league apart from Liverpool. I don't feel his loss as acutely as one might for someone like Grealish, even though at the time I was a bit nonplussed about him because I didn't quite get the hype and also, well, Harry Winks. Hindsight is wonderful. By far the biggest **** up though is cumulative really - the fact our squad is so unbalanced as a result of several transfer windows of underinvestment and one or two cases of sub-optimal recruitment in key areas (Aurier, for example).
I don’t buy that a player as talented as Bruno would not have improved us...he was immense at Sporting and now showing what he is capable of with United...but he wouldn’t improve our output? I think we would be a much better team with him in it. It’s not fair to cite hindsight...because plenty were calling it at the time, during the process as happens with a fair few transfers tbh but people forget that...just like they seem to have forgotten the 2 barren transfer windows when we were at our heights. Yeah it’s all on Levy in a big way...not just a little moan way. He needs to get out...it’s not my job to find a replacement so don’t expect me to know who would buy us. No one is buying us for what Levy wants anyway...so maybe we are stuck with the tight twat however that doesn’t make his lack of true ambition acceptable. I’ve said it before and will say it again...like managers take teams as far as they can...the same is possible with owners(ENIC) they’ve turned us into a shopping centre as was their dream so maybe now is a good time to move on...they have no ambition for what’s next hence pulling the plug just when the 5 year project was supposed to end and a new era of winning trophies began...then again I didn’t buy that bollocks either tbh.
got to agree here. Great players improve teams. You only need to look at how crap that united side were before he arrived where they were booed off the pitch at burnley and looked like plodders.
please log in to view this image Mane: was on £40k p/w at Southampton, we offered him somewhere in the region of £70-80k...but he insisted that his wages be trebled, meaning he would have been our highest-paid player, so him being a greedy bastard was the issue on that one Grealish: we definitely tried to be too cute with our first bid, where something in the region of £15m would've likely got the wheels turning that much quicker Dybala: when his former agent is holding a potential €40m lawsuit over his head over image rights, of course that's going to throw a spanner in the works as there's an added €40m liability in the deal, and that can't be made to go away by offering Juve another £5m Willian: we agreed a £30m fee with Anzhi Makhachkala and he was having his medical when Uncle Roman got on the phone to his mate at Anzhi to **** us over, so trying to claim that we offered a low bid or tried to haggle is an outright lie
Looks like bad results yet again... Goons winning comfortably... and Bournemouth doing their best to keep West Ham up.
Bournemouth are royally ****ed. They’re a side who’ll lose a lot of players too when relegated, no way are Ake and Wilson playing Championship football. King, Ramsdale, Brooks, Cook and Billing would probably have admirers too.
The whole point is that ENIC's ambition is to turn us into the best club in England. That can't be done by spending money because of ffp. So the only solution is to mske sure we have the best stadium to increase revenues, the best player facilities to get the best out of the team and then everything else follows. For what it might be like with someone else owning us I refer you to Everton.
We were linked with Josh King in The Back Before Times and he ticks a few boxes (HG, PL proven, can work as both cover up top and on the wing), although Ake's probably a pipedream as the Chavs are surely going to use their buyback clause as soon as anyone bids On the subject of players we missed out on, am I alone in being more pissed off we missed out on David Brooks than Grealish? He ticked a hell of a lot of boxes at the time (he's HG so wouldn't have caused any issues with our squad, he can play all across midfield, he was available for a very affordable £11.5m, he knows where the back of the net is) so he'd have been a very useful addition to our squad last season
Yeah what I've seen of Brooks he looks a real good player in the making and for the price Bournemouth paid I'm surprised we didn't pick him up ourselves as it had "Tottenham signing" written all over it. Personally I'd still rather Grealish though, for me he would've provided that additional creative spark we sorely lacked last season, and even this season before Lo Celso started finding his feet. I think England could really do with him too. We've got solid options at the back with Trent, Maguire, Mings, Chilwell (Dier if he keeps his form up), our attacking options are brilliant with Harry, Rashford, Sancho, Sterling, Abraham and probably Ings yet in midfield we lack any standout quality. Henderson is a real workhorse and Rice is a solid enough DM but neither provide a good enough outlet to get that ball forward to the attack, slotting in Grealish alongside one of them and I think we have a decent chance at winning the Euro's.
not sure i rate billing at all. Yes he's a big unit and he has all the bits athletically but he always seems so average. Like a large harry winks but worse. It's no coincidence that he's part of a pedestrian Huddersfield side and a now very lacklustre bournemouth side who were always soft but good going forward (not even managing that)