Man Utd to remove ‘last round peg’ after two signs of transfer ‘competence’

Editor F365
Bruno Fernandes, Erik ten Hag and Manuel Ugarte
Bruno Fernandes, Erik ten Hag and Manuel Ugarte

Manchester United fans want to vaunt the club for their transfer dealings while wondering how long one key player can last.

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I said maybe…
“Noel, Liam, if we’re proven guilty of these 115 charges, chances are we might owe quite a bit of money. You boys couldn’t organise a couple of fundraisers could you?”
Rob Carey

 

Man City and FFP pointers
Billy Boy says wait for something concrete before discussing the Man City case which is fair enough.

That said there are definitely signals that give you a sense for what the outcome might be..

First the league issued a lengthy explainer to Nottingham Forest last season as part of their FFP points deduction and fine. Forest were very compliant from the outset and the statement from the league included a line along the lines of, “had you not been so open and forthcoming we would’ve considered harsher punishments including larger deductions, fines and relegation from the league”.

I am speculating but to me that seems like signalling from the league. Forest did comply, why bother telling them what you might’ve done in a hypothetical situation that never arose?

Add to this that Richard Masters chose to be at Arsenal on last day of the season. Nobody thought they’d win the league and yet he didn’t want the limelight and the cameras…I don’t know the FA but I feel like these guys have egos and love the limelight.

Lastly Lord Pannick’s case that the entire league is illegally structured sounds to me like a desperate last throw of the dice. I can imagine his advice to Man City is that they’re dead to rights unless they can tear apart the structure itself that creates the rules.

So nobody knows what will happen but nothing is time barred and delays and obfuscation seem to have annoyed the league. There’s also just the behaviour in general. Do innocent people have any need to hide anything? A right to privacy, sure. But when you’re stood accused as an innocent person it’s easy to make an effort to demonstrate innocence. Perhaps for poorer people, particularly in the US, justice is something they can Ill afford but Man City are not poor so this argument doesn’t apply to them.
Minty, LFC

 

How long can Bruno Fernandes last at Man Utd?
In a fully fit, first-choice eleven, there remains only four pre-Ten Hag players who would currently have the honour of donning the fabled red. Diogo Dalot, Luke Shaw, Marcus Rashford and Bruno Fernandes.

Rashford, our seemingly mojo-less, child feeding, local hero, is surely destined to be soon shelved (at least temporarily), having already been overshadowed this season by the youthful chaos-makers Garnacho and Amad. In Dalot and Shaw, Ten Hag has exactly what he would want in his ranks, disregarding luck (lack of) with injuries. Quick, skillful, attack-minded players, comfortable on the ball, who cover themselves admirably defensively, offering the counter footed attackers ahead of them an everlasting overlap. Perfect soldiers.

Fernandes, however…

The best player for Utd post Ferguson? Absolutely. Capable of winning games on his own? Proven. A perfectly dimensioned square destined for his perfectly dimensioned square hole as part of a singularly brained, ruthlessly efficient killing machine, offering no mercy as pass after pass scythes through any remaining souls like a farmer at harvest, leaving our fallen foe with just enough hope to repeatedly sob one word: “mercy”? Not so much.

We have seen across a combined 105 minutes over the opening two games of the season how our team changes when featuring Mason Mount. Those gaping, penetrable voids in midfield? Evaporated. The futile, scattered presses, serving only to further widen those already gaping chasms? Extinguished. But also gone is a large degree of creativity and goal threat. A creativity and goal threat already at its lowest ebb.

Currently this is due to differing fitness issues laden across our burgeoning strike force. But now that Zirkzee has been paraded to the masses, and Højlund’s tweaked (twanged?) hamstring is carefully repairing, a change is coming.

In Zirkzee, Ten Hag has found a mountain of a striker who drops deep, links play, runs with the ball, likes tight spaces, and could have had two already if nudging a ball 99% over the goal line with no defenders or goal keeper in the vicinity hadn’t been deemed to be interfering with play. And Højlund is a sixty million plus pound, twenty year old bullish buck. A Viking tempest with a decent debut season under his belt, and a high ceiling. Signs of his further improvement, both individually and within the team, were visible all too briefly pre-season before the dreaded inevitability of one stretch too far by one so lacking in match sharpness.

The solution to this balance (lack of) issue seems to be at the cost of skipper Fernandes. Keep the shape, energy and deftness of touch of Mount, whilst keeping the creative link, goal threat and general maverickness of Zirkzee/hold up play, directness and finishing of Højlund. But shelving our newly minted captain?

The Fernandes situation at Utd is an interesting one. Quite rightly rewarded with a bumper new contract, he has kept the honour of unfurling the leader’s armband on a weekly basis for a further year. However, he is 30 in a week and a half’s time. And he is not Ten Hag’s.

Across the last two years, we have heard Ten Hag gush several opuses on his serial star man. Upon hearing his match winner’s name, our man Erik would flash an excited, almost nervous grin, reminiscent of a teen at the high school prom finally spotting his crush through the teeming pubescent masses as they gently sway to the rhythms of some forgotten 80’s clanger. “She’s here!”

Of course he loves Fernandes. Building a team in one’s own image takes time. Time is a luxury rarely afforded to modern managers when the banners of victory do not flutter regularly on battlegrounds nationwide. Fernandes will win you battles, and earn you what Man has coveted most throughout its destructive existence. Time. Time to build what every football manager desires. Their own team. We have not been able to say it is truly Ten Hag’s team until this season. Now, only four pre-Hags remain.

The newly assembled suited assassins have given Fernandes his shiny mega deal. Again, rightly so. Making Fernandes the biggest earner of them all finally suggests hierarchy at a club entrenched in predominantly rewarding inadequacy, false dawns and falser promises. It introduces a company line of having to earn the big bucks. It also keeps his value up and avoids the apparent sheer panic of navigating those familiar and treacherous “final year of contract” seas that have regularly capsized the Good Ship Utd across numerous recent voyages.

In two years time, at thirty two years old, with up to two more years remaining on his contract, the opportunity to recoup the majority, if not all of, if not more than, his forty seven million pound outlay might be the desired outcome all along.

With 25 fully fit pawns, does Fernandes make the board? For the time being. However, is this the year that Manchester Utd begins to phase out their talismanic leader for the greater good? We witnessed Mount’s removal twice in the first two games. Understandable. His fitness has never been guaranteed in red and you’d be a ballsy man to hook Fernandes first game of the season when chasing a winner.

However, Fernandes was substituted against Brighton. Unthinkable in seasons past. In time, we were to learn that Mount’s solo shower was only enforced due to an “issue”. Would no issue have resulted in Fernandes’ earlier sacrifice instead? That can has been nudged ever so gently a little further down the road for now, but the shadows of doubt loom large over Old Trafford. The sands are shifting. Legends cemented only in memory may crumble under the wheels of progress.

While I am no expert on the inner workings of Dutch football men, I get the tiniest of tweaks (twangs?) coming from the coldest regions of my dank lower intestine that we’ll be seeing Bruno Fernandes’ disbelieving mug bobbing side to side as he trudges off the green grass of home with increasing regularity as this season progresses. If Mount keeps doing the right things, what choice will Ten Hag have but to remove the last round peg to cement his mosaic of squares? And with the blood barely dry on a new 4 year deal, will Fernandes last 2?
Matt and Hunter

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Man Utd being competent shock!
It looks like my team will be signing ManU-el Ugarte, and for no more than the club originally wanted to pay (possibly slightly less, depending on which reports you believe).

Obviously no sane United fan (and there are one or two out there) will claim that Ugarte is ‘the missing piece of the jigsaw’ and the team are now going to sweep to glory in all competitions. I am, however, revelling in this display of apparent competence from the club, following years and years of Ed Woodward’s hilariously poor attempts at bluffing and brinkmanship, and general bravado followed immediately by pratfalls in the shape of rushed, overpriced purchases of players who were either not good enough, had the wrong attitude, or both.

Ugarte may well turn out to be inadequate, but there are two reasons to be pleased about the transfer from a United perspective. One, he’s not a hugely obvious name – before the new approach to transfers, the club would have gone all out for N’Golo Kante, on the basis that he’s one of the 20 players the Glazers have heard of. After repeatedly offering under the valuation, they would then have paid the full £85m on deadline day, and offered the 33-year-old Kante a five-year deal.

And two, United have had an absolute dearth of dedicated defensive midfielders in recent years. McFred were both shoehorned into the role, McTominay because he’s tall (and Mourinho was doing Mourinho things) and Fred because he runs around a lot. But they’re both attacking midfielders by nature, so understandably weren’t great as destroyers.

Before them: Schneiderlin and Fellaini. Schweinsteiger and Matic were both excellent in their day, but they were past their best when they arrived at United.

Ander Herrera! He was good.

I wrote all of the above yesterday and have now heard that United are in talks with Raheem ‘big name and a busted flush’ Sterling, so I take it all back. As you were.
Dan, (the Comments section may have gone but the brackets remain) Worthing

 

Chiesa is ace, actually
I disagree with Will Ford that Chiesa is pants, and as a Man United fan I think he would be a great signing for us, may be even better than Liverpool.

Rashford and Garnacho competing for the left and Chiesa and Amad for the right. I guess he usually plays on the left but I think he is better on the right then Rashford, and would offer something different than any of those three, since his strengths are different than lots of speed.

Not saying that’s all Garnacho, Amad and Rashford have going for them but Chiesa seems to have a type of calmness in front of goal that none of our forwards possess.
Zdravko

 

Early-season thoughts ahoy
Some early season thoughts… Chelsea will be great fun to watch. We just won’t know why each week until after they’ve played. Nice to see Brighton having a bit of fun with the Caicedo cash. Not much real change at City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Man U, Spurs, or Newcastle. Again, no idea what that will actually mean. Everton, oh my.

Villa wise… Rogers is looking better and better each passing week. He might be special. Watkins is always gonna Watkins. Still love the man. Emery needs to find a way of playing without him starting every game. He looks spent. Hardly surprising he isn’t match sharp, given he’s had no real pre-season. Onana has had a solid start. Hope that continues. Most significantly though; I can’t wait for Friday’s CL draw.

As one of the (sane) occasional comments contributors, I can’t say a blame F365 for removing them. Some unhinged stuff, and some genuinely unpleasant stuff. Couldn’t agree with Eoin more. Great email from Gav too. What the f*&k is wrong with some people?
Gary AVFC, Oxford (Oh good, an international break is coming up)

 

Comments: An update

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