Mourinho has to sell before he can buy

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Manchester United: Jose Mourinho will be told to sell before he can buy in January

I wonder who leaked this little nugget to the press.

Seems pretty obvious to me the club has spent fortunes on the squad in recent years which won't be sustained by our owners who are in it for profits.

Not saying it's all the managers fault that money needed to be spent and the players he's got in generally have done the business.

The bigger problems seem to be getting players to leave & finding clubs who will take them as there are a lot of players at the club right now who are very comfortable.

There is talk Fellaini could go in January because he's not agreed a new deal and can walk away for nothing in the summer and if the club got an offer for Shaw then surely they'd have to take it.
 
Thing that worries me regarding sell before you can buy at Untied is we very very rarely get a decent price for any of our players, look at the people we could maybe in January and how much do we think we would get.

Lingard 10m
Fellani (nearly out of contract) 10/15m at a push
Mata 20m?
Shaw 10m?
Lindelof 500k lol

My worry is we will have to sell an asset but jesus aint Woodward going on about how were making 500m every bloody week and we can match anyone in the market, sell before you buy, what you doing Woodward either put up or shut up about how were making ten times more money than anyone else
 
@Edgy1968 like or not the club is still spending something like £50m a season paying off debt and debt interest because of our owners, so that is a player every year the club can't buy because our owners are (insert rude word here). Utd's spending over the last 5 years is probably on par with anyone apart from PSG and we're playing by the rules we don't have a countries wealth behind us blagging FFP with inflated sponsorship deals. If anything we have one hand tied behind our backs because in 12 years we've paid out around £1bn to service debts just think what we could've done with that cash.

Woodward might be a Glazer guy but to be fair the club have made a lot of money available to our managers over the last few seasons I just think we targeted the wrong players under Moyes & LVG. Over 3 summers we must have spent £300m and were probably weaker than we were when Fergie left. Our record for selling players is nuts we sold Hernandez for about £7m 2 years later they sell him for nearly triple what they paid, Welbeck to Arsenal for £16m when Sterling is going at £50m I mean Welbz was hardly a world beater but come on did we forget to add the young English player mark up to the price tag?

It is a problem because when you really break it down where's the money going to come from if we do sell players, Utd didn't cash in on China while that market was open and unless we offload players to other PL clubs we won't get top prices and our players are unlikely to want to move to other premier league clubs that aren't direct rivals.
 
My worry is we will have to sell an asset but jesus aint Woodward going on about how were making 500m every bloody week and we can match anyone in the market, sell before you buy, what you doing Woodward either put up or shut up about how were making ten times more money than anyone else

Woodward said that two or three years ago. Not sure he has said it since.

If true, Smalling or Jones would bring in £20m. Mkhitaryan and/or Martial would be the big name departure(s).

Edit: Didn't realise this was with regard to the January transfer window. Not sure the club will buy or sell.
 
There's a long list of players at the club that are replaceable, some more than others. We've got 5 players battling it out at left back, none of which in my opinion are of required standard to be first choice. We could cut 3 or 4 of those at least. CM is light in numbers as is our attack and we could lose some of those too.
 
like or not the club is still spending something like £50m a season paying off debt and debt interest because of our owners, so that is a player every year the club can't buy because our owners are (insert rude word here).

The club probably pays less in interest than it would do paying taxes.
 
Not sure we will buy anyone to be honest, we are renowned for being quiet in January and not sure it’ll be any different this time around. There has to be a really good player available or good value for money ala picking up Sanchez for a smaller fee because of his contract running out.

I think if someone came in for players like Darmian, Shaw or Mata then we may sell. But I don’t see us being that active in the new year.
 
The club probably pays less in interest than it would do paying taxes.

Heard this argument before but I’d rather they were paying taxes than debt being a resident of the U.K. and if they invested that money in the playing staff or club itself then they wouldn’t pay tax as they wouldn’t be making profits plus they wouldn’t have had to double ticket prices in the early years either. Pretty sure any taxes the club do pay on profits now get paid in Deleware or wherever the Glazers have set up their offshore tax arrangements for the holding company that own the shares.

While this argument may be true now it certainly wasn’t when we had those high interest PIK loans early on. The Glazers lucked out re-financing long term just before the markets crashed in 2008, Liverpool didn’t and they almost went bust as a result.

Reality is our club operates as a business and books have to be balanced, the first team squad has to much fat around the edges that needs trimming before more players can be added. Mourinho has done well on this so far but still feels like there’s another summers work to be done before it’s a squad that can challenge City.
 
I’d take smaller fees for players just to get them off the books. But it’s such a cosy little nest egg a Man Utd contract, so getting these bang average players to leave their £100k plus deal isn’t easy. No wonder players like Ashley Young wanna hold on for as long as they can. When the bubble burst and he leaves the only clubs that come in for him will be the West Brom’s or Watford’s which is his level.

The penny pinching makes sense to me because we do just spend spend spend. But then we have done stupid things in recent season. Not just transfer fees but stupid contracts. The Schweinsteiger deal just never made any sense to me. LVG going to the board and saying ‘look I can get Schweinsteiger on the cheap’. ‘But his gonna cost us 200,000 a week’. And we all said sure crack on Louis. Lingard earning £100k a week makes me feel sick when I see my paycheque each month. The list goes on.
 
It's been a while since I've had a discussion about the Glazers, I've forgotten the counter arguments to misinformation. Not saying your post includes incorrect information, JSP.

Back to the article, the wage bill increase by 13.5% to £263.5m is probably the most important point in the article. I suspect the wage bill is the bigger concern for the club, not transfer fees. Also, the article doesn't mention the squad is at the 25 man squad cap.
 
I don’t begrudge Lingard his salary he is in an industry where the top earners earn 5 times what he’s reported to earn, when you put the top earners on the contracts we do it drags everyone else up. I doubt Lingard earns the £100k a week that was reported when he signed his new deal but he still earns a lot for a player of his ability.

I think the main issue is attacking signings haven’t really come off in recent seasons. Mata/Mhiki/Depay/Di Maria all came and none have really hit the standard. Martial did in his first season and is again this season but those 4 have cost us somewhere around £160m and we got about £60m of that back but none of them reached the heights we’d have hoped for. Compare that to Liverpool signing Mane/Firmino/Salah for around £100m and all 3 have hit it off, City with Jesus, Sterling, Sane, Silva, De Bruyne etc all hitting it off. Utd have just had way to many players come in who haven’t made the step up and moving them on is tricky as big contracts are hard to shift.

Our net spend figures are shocking because so much of the fergie team went for next to nothing. Rio, Vidic, Fletcher, Anderson, Rooney (free), Scholes & Giggs (retired), RVP, Evra & Evans £5m each, Nani & Hernandez £7m each, Kagawa £10m.

Schweni, Schniederlin, Depay, Di Maria all bought and then sold on at a loss.

The way the money has been spent over the last 5 summers along with the way it’s come back you can see why the owners might want to get our house in order before investing more.
 
JSP you make same great points. Not just on this thread but in general. But there isn’t a combination of words that you or anyone else could ever write, that will justify that Lingard earns 100k a week. It just will never make sense in my head. But I massively respect you for trying.

Again I agree on you with the players we’ve signed not hitting it off, especially compared to the ones like you say at City and Liverpool. I’d be interested to know what you put that down to? Is it the Scouting not being up to scratch? Or the managers? Surely there’s a behind the scenes team that all collectively decide who’s in and who’s out not just the man in charge?

It’s just strange that we seem to spend so much more, but don’t get the quality that often. Yet others do get it and for smaller fees. Like Mane. Were we ever in for him? If not why not? The right hand sides been a problem for a while now, why wasn’t that identified and Mane brought in?
 
United were strongly linked with Mane when Van Gaal was the manager. I think United had a bid rejected? If I remember correctly, fans were unimpressed.
 
I think we’ve flip flopped on style with recent managers so a Mourinho player is very different to a Van Gaal player. I think City, Liverpool & Chelsea all know the type of player they want and pick players and managers that compliment each other. Utd have just gone for big names and hoped for the best I think until Jose came in. I think judging personality has been an issue way to many players seem to have come in and seen the Utd contract as them “making it” they’ve not come here with aspirations of winning they’ve come here for financial reasons.

I think Mourinho has changed that the guys he’s got in are either relentless winners like Ibra or Pogba or young and hungry like Bailly & Lukaku.

Reading between the lines Fergie left no real network behind his network of old boys retired with him, both Moyes & LVG couldn’t believe the lack of scouting network they found at the club and I think the club have been putting some better structures in place that will be able to cope with managers leaving.

We were linked with Firmino & Mane but we signed Depay & Mhiki instead both of these guys were also high on Liverpool’s wish list it was even reported that we beat them to both and the guys they signed instead where the backup choices. I think everyone at the time thought Utd got the better deals but it didn’t really turn out that way.
 
Yeah didn't think about all the debt/Glazers etc., just sick and tired of Woodward going on and on about money/marketing/sponsorship and we spent less than Everton last summer plus add in the 50m in sales from last January we only really spent 100 odd million last summer, we got 30m for the Europa win I think so its not like we broke the bank in the summer and now we have no funds available in January, that doesn't sit right with me.

Anyway moving past the money problems, I was speaking to the lads today about the possible departures and was saying that I would personally be happy with getting some money for some of the deadwood and promoting a few of the kids, if we look at next summer we were talking about:

Sell Smalling promote Tuanzbe in his place

Sell Shaw, Blind, Darmian buy Rose with Mitchell/Young as understudy

Sell Herrera, Carrick buy Saul with McTominey, Pereira as understudy

Fosu-Mensah as Valencia/Matic understudy

Sell Lingard, maybe Miki as he has just been appalling, Mata & Zlatan will probably leave on a free, bring in Griezmann & Lucas Moura

The above was just on our group chat but PSG need to sell Moura, easily get him for 20/25m as he is not playing and Saul can tackle and has a pass in him, the way At Madrid are going can see a few leaving.

Over the last few years as JSP says, every buy have been throwing money at mega stars hoping they work, need to get back to hungry kids who want to achieve things and not just fatten their wallets.
 
I think the money the club made last January was paying off the previous summers spending we've dropped big money and we pay huge wages our wage bill is one of the highest in world football and you look at the quality in the squad and think how the hell has this happened. God knows how much the club wrote off in the end with Rooney & Schweni leaving I assume Zlatan signed on for another season on reduced terms with his injury but Lukaku is probably on very big wages.

It's Woodward's job to go around the world and market the club to attract sponsors and you can't knock the success of the club over the last decade from that point of view and part of that is bragging about your revenues and profit margins and blah blah blah because that's what sponsors/investors want to hear about, he tends to only be heard on these investor conference calls anyway . The other side of the business the football side has been run poorly for years now the Glazers/Woodward survived on Fergie's brilliance but when he retired there was a huge void and with no one to fill it we've wasted fortunes and performances on the pitch have gone off a cliff.

I think the wider picture is where did this story come from it feel like Mourinho preparing another excuse and the one thing he really can't complain about at Utd is having money to spend the club have backed him brilliantly but it feels to me like all is not well between him and Woodward. My guess is he wants a new contract sorted now and he's been told it's not happening until the summer and to get on with his job.
 
Ha yeah probably right re the contract issue, my issue with Woodward is that he is always talking up how well were doing how much money were making, how we can afford to break the world transfer record time and again, he may well be impressing investors in China, Dubai and America which is all great etc but he is always letting every other massive club know that were mega rich and for them to hold us to ransom and hike the price up of every player we go for, which is what happens time and again, we always pay mental fees for bang average players and sell players for next to nothing.

As good as him marketing us is, it should not really be a role that also overlaps with the transfer side of it as it just sky rockets transfer fees and wages, agents must be rubbing their hands when they walk into a meeting with Woodward thinking, easily get another 50k for my client and an extra 10m for myself here, hence average players like Lingard earning more money than Harry bloody Kane.

He should go and do what he is good at re marketing the club and maybe get someone in place who isn't going to let every tom dick and harry know exactly how much we intend to spend and how many times we can break the bank for top stars.

I just think that he has quite a bit to answer for when it comes to our wage bill ballooning out of control and the fees we have been paying over the past 2/3 years.

I hate that we have lost our identity and promoting from within (Rashford apart obviously)
 
Ha yeah probably right re the contract issue, my issue with Woodward is that he is always talking up how well were doing how much money were making, how we can afford to break the world transfer record time and again, he may well be impressing investors in China, Dubai and America which is all great etc but he is always letting every other massive club know that were mega rich and for them to hold us to ransom and hike the price up of every player we go for, which is what happens time and again, we always pay mental fees for bang average players and sell players for next to nothing.

This isn't true. We only really hear from Woodward in investor conference calls, which happens four times in a year.
 
I think the club are looking for a better football structure but that means re-organising the board and further marginalising Fergie/Charlton as board members as they're basically ambassador positions and I don't think either of them are capable of making actual decisions on behalf of the club now. They're basically there to have photos with sponsors but Fergie lost all his power when he advised the club to stick Moyes in charge. I think some guy has come in from Juventus to head up the scouting department hopefully he can help us in finding the right players to fit the club rather than just ringing up Mino or Jorge and seeing who they've got for sale this summer.

Woodward has plenty to answer for but he took over the club that had no structure so he's had to use agents to get deals sorted as we didn't have a director of football or negotiator on the payroll to act on our behalf because Gill/Fergie and all their network of people went with them. He's stretched the budgets to give the managers what they wanted until this summer when he couldn't get Perisic because Inter were asking for more than we had to spend and we didn't offload anyone of significant value in the summer we only sold Januzaj. I think people read way to much into what he says on those investor calls he is obviously painting a pretty picture to these people as they own shares in the business and have a right to know what the plans are sadly those plans are financially based not on the pitch based because investors don't care if we win trophies they care about things that may have an effect on the clubs share price.

I don't think Woodward is giving anything away our turnover figures are pretty public even if he said nothing clubs would know we've got plenty of money to spend and it takes a lot of money to pull off these big deals now. Football has had 3 big shockwaves in terms of transfer fees in the last few years the first was the new TV deal for Prem Clubs massively jumped the prices, the 2nd was brexit and the effect it had on the value of the euro vs the pound and the final one is the Neymar deal. PSG moving the bar as much as they did for the top deals by signing Neymar/Mbappe has meant no one knows what anyone is worth now if he's £200m then how much is Kane?
 
This isn't true. We only really hear from Woodward in investor conference calls, which happens four times in a year.

It may well have been at investor conference calls but it is true that he has on more than one occasion said about how we can compete with anyone, and were not afraid to pay big for big players, from memory it was the summer we bought Pogba he said we have no problem breaking the world record for a transfer and im pretty sure he mentioned it again the January after, the quote I think was something like "if the right player becomes available we have no problem in breaking the record again".

If I'm wrong then fair enough, only going on what I read at the time and not an actual conversation I had with him
 
The things Woodward has to answer for in my eyes is the difference between our business when David Gill was in charge and the absolute circus its been since he left, chalk and cheese imo
 
I don't think it's changed much to be honest the final years of the Fergie reign the club were always involved in summer transfer sagas remember the Sneijder, Hazard, Nasri, Garay, Gaitan, Di Maria, Sanchez summers the only big name we signed in the back end of his reign was RVP and even then we were just lucky he wanted to come to Utd rather than City at that time.

Fergie had this whole thing about their being "no value in the market" which I took as his way of spinning the fact that the club couldn't really spend big until it got the debts under control so he worked with what he had and squeezed every last drop out of them before retirement, you could argue he left the money there for the next guy to spend. The ones I think we really missed were Modric & Bale we shouldn't of stopped bullying Spurs into selling us their best players every few summers it was a solid business model and if at that time Utd had the financial muscle it should've had we'd have got those players in my opinion. Fergie always recognised the benefit of signing players from within the premier league as they knew the requirements and were settled in England the gamble was normally could they step up in Europe but he always felt sure they'd do him well in the premier league.

Lets not forget it was Fergie/Gill who signed off £7m for Bebe :p
 
Haha oh he had some humdingers did Fergie ha the thing I loved though about them two they had a structure, yes they would go and spend a few quid on potential but he always assessed his squad and every summer went out and bought one world class player to improve the team, we seem to have gone from buying one maybe two world class improvements to what we need to being the English version of Madrid where we buy whatever star name is available and hope we can fit him in, we seem to have no structure to our spending now whereas we always did under Gill.

It has improved under Jose but before then it was comical, spending all summer trying to sign Fabregas when it was never on the cards, the Kroos fiasco, Fellani fiasco, the lawyers turning up in Spain re Herrera, were they ours were they not ha it was just insane.

Yeah there were always transfer sagas, there always are but not to the degree they have been since Gill left haha
 
Agree on the Spurs comment as well, Bale and Modric imagine we had gotten them pair!
 
Woodward has backed up his words by signing Pogba and Lukuka, who are the third and ninth most expensive ever transfers. He's been fine with the exception of his first transfer window.
 
I'd imagine Woodward's doing his best in the circumstances. Easy to blame him when maybe it's those above him that make things more difficult for him to get things done.
 
I think the first 2-3 summers were a bit of a mess, we went into LVGs 2nd season with only 1 striker in Rooney and got Martial last minute. Was that the summer we messed about trying to sign Muller & Ramos 2 players who were never leaving their club sides.

Seems like Mourinho has improved things seems like there’s more of a thought out plan since he came in. He did have 6 months before he took over to assess the squad and identify potential targets for the summer. Moyes & LVG were dropped in at short notice and I think that was reflected by the signings made in their first seasons.
 
At the time, the majority of fans were delighted with the summer transfer windows in 2014 and 2015. They were claimed to be two of the better summer transfer windows.

Arrivals in 2014: Herrera, Shaw, Di Maria, Rojo, Blind, Fosu-Mensah.

Arrivals in 2015: Martial, Depay, Schweinsteiger, Schneiderlin, Romero.

To be honest, I find discussions on what happens behind the scenes to be fairly pointless as us fans have very little idea of what exactly goes on.
 
It's international week so we've got to find something to talk about haha!
 
Bit like Christmas talk of January transfer targets now starts in November.

Anyway my feeling all along with this stuff is Mourinho is using his people to try and put some pressure on the club to sort his new contract until they do we'll be stuck with the sulky teenager version of Mourinho.
 
This perfectly sums up some of Uniteds transfer activity since Fergie/Gill retired. Sent a scout to Iceland to scout the Iceland vs Czech Republic game...the game was being played in Dubai. Inept.
 

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