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Circus ManUnitus - Nobody's At The Wheel

I suppose the other thing is when they voted. These votes tend to be unnecessarily early, so it's possible it was just after the Paris game when everyone was praising United.
 
Jonathan Wilson: Dominant Emirates Marketing Project show how vast the gulf has become with United

Taking the players to The Cliff training ground generated some sort of response but it was not enough. The danger is that Solskjær concludes he is not being nostalgic enough. So what next? A round of golf with Alex Stepney at Davyhulme? Get Bryan Robson to take the lads on an all-day bender at Pat Crerand’s pub?

When Solskjær began speaking of the values of old, it seemed a clever rhetorical tool. Get the old spirit back, remind the players of the privilege of playing for such a club, reforge the bonds with disaffected fans and try to heal the rift between the Mourinho loyalists and those who were actually watching what was going on. But that should have been a tool that allowed him to effect radical change under the guise of restoring the glorious past. The worry now is that Solskjær actually believes all this guff and thinks all that is required for United’s return to the top is the reimposition of Fergusonian values.

His refusal to use Ferguson’s car-parking space is, frankly, a little weird. It feels a worryingly small step from here to finding Ferguson in a rocking chair in the spare bedroom while the unnervingly mild-mannered Solskjær butchers potential rivals for his affection in the shower. Supply your own joke about taxidermy and spending his days arranging stuffed corpses of once proud beasts.

And while Solskjær attempts to reconjure 1999, the history that is actually being replayed is that of 30 years earlier and the chaos into which the club lapsed after the retirement of Matt Busby. City, meanwhile, seem successfully to be breaking free from their past. Nobody talks any more of Cityitis, the disease diagnosed by Joe Royle.
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Ouch!
... City are a different club now.

They are what happens when you take vast sums of money – and let’s for now ignore concerns about the source and whether that money has been spent within Uefa regulations – and use it to overhaul the entire infrastructure and ethos of a club. Long before he arrived, City had been built on Guardiola principles. This sort of consistency, this implacable pursuit of the title, is what a holistic approach, every department following the same basic philosophy to the same goal, can bring.

United’s patched up mish-mash of a squad, their skipping between managers of different types and different approaches, their leaking roof, is what happens when decisions are being made by people with little football expertise, appointing famous names almost at random in the hope of stumbling on a messiah, while doing nothing to upgrade the infrastructure. Solskjær might get the whole squad to sit down and watch the X-Files with a bottle of Two Dogs while worrying about the millennium bug, but reliving the 90s won’t get beyond United’s basic lack of long-term planning.

City show the way, show what planned investment can achieve – and that is why, for now, for the first time since perhaps the 1930s it is they who are definitively the dominant force in Manchester.
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jts1882 said:
Jonathan Wilson: Dominant Emirates Marketing Project show how vast the gulf has become with United

Taking the players to The Cliff training ground generated some sort of response but it was not enough. The danger is that Solskjær concludes he is not being nostalgic enough. So what next? A round of golf with Alex Stepney at Davyhulme? Get Bryan Robson to take the lads on an all-day bender at Pat Crerand’s pub?

When Solskjær began speaking of the values of old, it seemed a clever rhetorical tool. Get the old spirit back, remind the players of the privilege of playing for such a club, reforge the bonds with disaffected fans and try to heal the rift between the Mourinho loyalists and those who were actually watching what was going on. But that should have been a tool that allowed him to effect radical change under the guise of restoring the glorious past. The worry now is that Solskjær actually believes all this guff and thinks all that is required for United’s return to the top is the reimposition of Fergusonian values.

His refusal to use Ferguson’s car-parking space is, frankly, a little weird. It feels a worryingly small step from here to finding Ferguson in a rocking chair in the spare bedroom while the unnervingly mild-mannered Solskjær butchers potential rivals for his affection in the shower. Supply your own joke about taxidermy and spending his days arranging stuffed corpses of once proud beasts.

And while Solskjær attempts to reconjure 1999, the history that is actually being replayed is that of 30 years earlier and the chaos into which the club lapsed after the retirement of Matt Busby. City, meanwhile, seem successfully to be breaking free from their past. Nobody talks any more of Cityitis, the disease diagnosed by Joe Royle.

Ouch!
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That is actually a good piece and true.
 
According to The Times.

£25k-50k per week
Lee Grant, age 36, position goalkeeper, contract expires 2020
Andreas Pereira, 23, midfielder, 2020

£50k-£75k per week
Diogo Dalot, 20, full back, 2023 (+1 year option)
Scott McTominay, 22, midfielder, 2023 (+1 year option)
Sergio Romero, 32, goalkeeper, 2021 (+1 year option)

£75k-£100k per week
Marcus Rashford, 21, forward, 2020 (+1 year option)
Victor Lindelof, 24, defender, 2021 (+1 year option)
Eric Bailly, 25, defender, 2020 (+2 year option)
Matteo Darmian, 29, full back, 2020
Ander Herrera, 29, midfielder, 2019
Antonio Valencia, 33, full back, 2019
Ashley Young, 33, full back, 2020

£100k-£125k per week
Jesse Lingard, 26, forward, 2021 (+1 year option)
Phil Jones, 27, centre back, 2023 (+1 year option)
Chris Smalling, 29, centre back, 2022 (+1 year option)

£125k-£150k per week
Nemanja Matic, 30, midfielder, 2020 (+1 year option)

£150k-£175k per week
Romelu Lukaku, 25, striker, 2022 (+1 year option)
Fred, 26, midfielder, 2023 (+1 year option)
Marcos Rojo, 29, defender, 2021 (+1 year option)
Juan Mata, 30, midfielder, 2019

£175k-£200k per week
Anthony Martial, 23, forward, 2024 (+1 year option)
Luke Shaw, 23, full back, 2023 (+1 year option)
Paul Pogba, 26, midfielder, 2021 (+1 year option)
David De Gea, 28, goalkeeper, 2020

£350k+ per week
Alexis Sánchez, 30, forward, 2022


How many of the top ten earners are first choice starters?
 
If Lukaku isn't wanted anymore, I'd take him at Spurs. Think he could play alongside Kane as well as cover him when he's out, and he's pretty decent as a wide forward too imo. Just depends how mental the fee would be.
 
the dza said:
If Lukaku isn't wanted anymore, I'd take him at Spurs. Think he could play alongside Kane as well as cover him when he's out, and he's pretty decent as a wide forward too imo. Just depends how mental the fee would be.
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He has the first touch of a elephant.
 
the dza said:
If Lukaku isn't wanted anymore, I'd take him at Spurs. Think he could play alongside Kane as well as cover him when he's out, and he's pretty decent as a wide forward too imo. Just depends how mental the fee would be.
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You won't get that much support for that idea.
 
milo said:
He'd be useless for us, he can't hold the ball up and can't pass.
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This signing won't happen in a million years, but...

I think he can cross and pass quite well. I think it was the FA Cup game v Arsenal where he played a quality pass for an assist and I always thought he looked decent cutting in from the right when at Everton. "Useless" or "can't pass" is the sort of criticism that got levelled against Sissoko not so long ago, it was aimed at Wanyama when we signed him too. Poch would take a player like Lukaku and make a monster out of him imo.

I'm sure there are a million videos of him tripping over his own feet, but the first assist in this video is the pass against Arsenal that I'm thinking of. A player that can't play football wouldn't execute that imo:

 
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