Tomo

Neither way is risk free. I'd understand taking a short term approach if we're in a title race bit 'just' for 4th?

My preference for a new striker is Morelos. He seems to have sorted out his discipline issues this season and he's the perfect striker for a pressing team, has shades of Suarez about him.

By the sounds of it Lampard is going down the Klopp route of waiting until bonafide top level upgrades become avalible, which is a good thing.

Doesn't matter if they were plan A or plan Ds, they were clearly his idea. If they were getting forced on him do you really think he would have given Bakayoko and Morata the chances they got?

Why do people keep saying this? Never in a million years will clubs agree to this especially with players that will attract bidding wars. Pulisic was the ultimate anomaly.

The only thing that would remotely justify Lemar is if it's for extra short term squad depth as we've been told Sancho is avalible but not until the summer. Anything else and we're being had.

Tbh I saw the Barca-Atletico result without checking the scorers then saw your post and assumed he had a mind changing screamer of a match

I wonder how many adamant we should have "fully backed him" still hold that view. With every signing at Inter it becomes more and more obvious he was a bigger driver to the 2017 horror window than people like to admit. Keeping him and giving him another window would have set us back years.

The pitch was an awful choice but the match was very much nessesery. Two and a half weeks without a proper game before a final was too much, we needed something for match sharpness heading to Baku.

Oh god, absolutely no way, he's been absolutely shocking at Leti. Also I know it's not all about goals as a winger but 4 goals in 64 games (his record in Spain) is shocking

It could be right. We don't know how much % of games that he has to play at West Ham for the buy obligation to be triggered, it could be as low as 15-20%. Maybe were prepared to (potentially) give the extra £20m for a bit more leeway in game time which will give us a bit more time to work out whether he will actually be worth it or not. We will be able to theoretically play him every game from now until about October without triggering the clause. That said I'm not really keen on any CM signing right now unless they're Iniesta/Modric level quality or have the potential to be, we have a lot more pressing needs in the side.

I think Zaha would do well here but I'm glad if the rumours are true that the board are walking away from the £80m price tag, far too much. Palace are spiting themselves taking a non negotiable stance though, as the years trickle on Wilfs value will keep decreasing. Would make a lot of business sense for them to meet us in the middle a bit, use that money to get 2/3 decent young players and try and get first refusal when we put our list up of players available for loan during the window.

So did Lazio. Celtic beat them home and away (lesser side away IIRC but still). On a slightly different note the Glasgow clubs are low-key returning to some form of relevance in Europe. Both Celtic and Rangers producing strong European showings this season.

Its almost as if he's trying to make up for toying with him them while he was here.

I think if we continued the more solid shape first route after Conte he may have got another chance but even if he was a success he was always going to be in trouble once we moved to a more front foot based system. He was always a quick transition based midfielder as opposed to a controller, ironically he (in peak condition) would probably suit United right now, his quick balls over the top to Rashford, Martial and James would cause havoc on the break.

Ive kept hope with him for a while given how incredible he was pre the Barca error but enough is enough now, it's been nearly two years and two new managers and he's still scared of his own shadow. It's such a shame because I genuinely believe the version that returned to us was the best young defender on the planet he was that good.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-7861651/Manchester-United-offer-captain-Ashley-Young-Italy.html On a one man mission to rid United of their deadwood, yet apparently the reason we fell of the top is that we didn't back him with a blank cheque.

Idk, it's getting to the point where it's hard to judge a United player properly in that set up unless they're ludicrously bad ala Alexis. There's something wrong with the culture there that's holding players back.

@Jason @OneMoSalah Just to add a bit of further context to my point, Inter are apparently very close to signing Ashley Young

Conte played games with the club in the second season to the point he practically threw away the Man City game, absolutely no way would he have given Bakayoko and Morata the chances they got if they weren't his signings. If they were forced on him he would have played Hazard as false 9 and Christensen/Luiz as CDM to "send a message". Even if Alexis started okay for his standards to even be interested after his level at United was diabolical. Another example is Naingolan, a player he was allegedly angry we couldn't get over the line he ditches the minute he actually gets to coach him. Yes we probably would have done better if we got all his first choice targets but that's like saying Fergie would have won even more titles and CLs if he got Maldini and Ronaldinho when he tried, it's very rare for a club to pull off every single number one target (especially when you're fighting or trying to get them off more financial able clubs and more appealing managers like we were) and if Baka was his way of improvising then.....

Conte has many strengths as a manager but the market isn't one of them, the fact he actually brought Alexis to Inter despite his clear decline to a lower league standard player for a whole two years prior says it all, "backing him properly" would have likely lead to us being the one's stuck with him. As far as not giving Conte further reign on transfers go, that's up there with the near catastrophic fuck up of replacing Drogba with Adriano in the thank fuck that didn't happen stakes.

He would have likely scored more goals but still held us back and as soon as Sarri came in he would have been firmly on borrowed time.

I thought he was going to bomb in Serie A so fair play to him for going there and ressurecting his career a bit. Martinez brings to the table the qualities he doesn't have and their partnership works well due to it. Still delighted he never returned here though.

Simeone's record with forward/flair players is genuinely horrendous, so many have bombed hard under him. Don't know whether it's because he's weak at coaching attack or his eye for attacking/flair players is crap (or both) but his list of attacking signings and how they've done is criminal.

All of those apart from Falcao contributed to a respectable level for us, especially the former and latter.