Some merit in that, but also manipulating the figures somewhat when you decide on the time frame to focus on in particular.
not really. It's just the point where having a smaller stadium, and not having permanent CL football meant that we weren't spending the most any more. We had a financial advantage over the other clubs in that decade, and yet we didn't win the title once. After that other clubs were spending more.
Definitely, under Benitez we definitely made a lot of purchases and sales, but I would guess that when you are looking to build upon, or add to a title winning / challenging squad, you are more likely to make those 3.5~ changes rather than attempt to upgrade other positions en masse. Manchester United haven't really required an overhaul for ages, they have a track record of big spending on young players to add to their team that eventually take up squad or first team places later on, whether Rio Ferdinand (£30m), Phil Jones (£17m), Carrick (£18m), Rooney (£28m), Nani (£13.5m), Anderson (£15.5m), Smalling (£10m), De Gea (£18m), Hargreaves (£17m), Kagawa (£12m)
I think you're talking about two slightly separate things. The thing is that a lot of the players rafa bought were much of a muchness. Either they didn't settle, or just weren't that great to begin with, but players came and went, while we built the core of a very good team. I think it ultimately boils down to better scouting, and working hard to integrate all new signings into the team.
I think if you look at the pattern of the last couple of years you can pick out three periods where man utd won four out of five league titles, then had a bit of a spell in the wilderness, and then come back with a new team. They also struggle in europe when they're doing this rebuilding spell. but can do quite well when they're winning those titles.
I also think you underestimate the amount of turnover at man utd. It happens on a continuous basis. I think they're in the middle of a substantial overhaul over the last three seasons. A lot of the players from the team that won three titles in a row are gone. Only Vidic, ferdinand, Carrick, Giggs, Evra, Rooney, fletcher, Nani and anderson remain from the squad that won the CL in 2008. And you'd have to doubt the futures of the last five. Either way There's going to be very few of those players at the club in 2014-15. They try to build a team that is young enough to go for five seasons, before being largely overhauled, with the young players from the first team, becoming the older players in the next team. They basically keep players for longer than us. We need to sign players that we can count on to become important first team players for five or six seasons.
We need to start thinking in that timespan. At the moment, I would only say that Coutinho, Sturridge, Sterling and wisdom look like they are currently in that category. Hopefully Allen, borini and aspas can prove themselves this year. The rest of the current squad with the possible exception of kelly and maybe henderson, aren't going to be around in five years time. The more players we add in this category, the more rapidly we can reduce the turnover in the squad.
I suppose the thing is what can we learn from that? The first is patience. Ferguson stuck with rooney and ronaldo in europe, even though they didn't score a goal in europe until the quarter final first leg against Roma in 2007. (apart from a hattrick on rooney's debut) Then they beat roma 7-1, and suddenly they started to score against everyone. The thing was that they had to suck up three or four pretty shitty european seasons while they waited for them to get the finger out.
Ferguson bought David De Gea because he was prepared to suck up a couple of shaky years where he learned how to deal with crosses, because he thinks that he could become their goalkeeper for the next 10 or 15 years. And he has kind of improved. That's one shitty problem that the new manager won't have. Or possibly the manager after him. They bought Kagawa because they think that after one year to settle in, he can do it for them for at least five years, and possibly more. phil jones cost a lot of money but they think he could be at the club for 10 years. Even if he only ever becomes some kind of athletic John O'Shea, that's an immensely valuable player to have.
The difference for us though is that we don't have european football to offer players who come to us. It puts pressure on us to get there before the players we sign get irritated and want to move on. If we don't get back to the CL then how long will coutinho want to stay, and the process has to begin again. I'd be happy if we were able to move ahead of everton, and seriously close the gap on arsenal and spurs. We're effectively competing with them for one CL place, and we've got a lot of ground to make up. But we're probably not going to pass out both of them in one season. we have to get Uefa cup football next season, and be in a position to have a realistic chance of finishing ahead of arsenal and spurs the season after. After that it might well become difficult to hold onto our better players.
Then there is still relatively young players in Valencia (£16m), Young (£17m) Veron (£28m) van Nistelrooy (£19m). Spending that until recently, we haven't really been able to match - or if we have spent that, we've had to spread the money over 2-3 players for multiple positions, or have been out of the top European competition and been a less attractive move, whereas Man United have had the luxury of adding one or two each year to bolster an already strong squad and keep things stable- that's definitely an advantage - one that has been borne out due to their success perhaps, but the only time we had the chance to do similar, we screwed up the window somewhat, but also had to sell in order to raise capital to invest- what a difference it might have been had Hicks and Gillett not been at the club in the summer of 2009 and we could have built upon, rather than start to break up that squad- imagine adding to that team with a solid, proper net spend, mouth watering times we could have had. I'm so gutted, as I believe Benitez almost had us at the level where he could then make those 2-3 signings per season and keep us up in the top four. If only...
I think It's possible to overstate the impact of H&G on the financial state of our club, because we never really made enough money for them to take all that much out of the club. you're also overlooking that regardless of who was in charge of the club, xabi alonso and alvaro arbeloa were always going to move to real madrid. We then went out and spent the money on Aquilani and Glen Johnson, and quite frankly, that didn't work out very well for us. We had just bizarrely bought and sold Robbie Keane at great expense. I think the problem was in rafa's last year, our wage bill started to explode as our team suddenly seemed to fall apart. Our wages jumped 20% in rafa's last season. It's not like our financial difficulties stopped us from spending an extra £18 million on wages in the 2009-10 season. I think the impacts of the gradually exploding wagebill over the next couple of years were considerably more damaging to the club than the impact of HIcks and Gillette, who seem to have wound up getting their fingers burned, and the impact on the club of their borrowing finished with the takeover by FSG.
Basically I think that much of what has happened over the last four seasons have been consistently appalling, however it's not a sudden thing that can be blamed primarily one event or one group of people, but it is the culmination of a lot of different things that turned us from a title challenging team into a team that bounces around seventh while losing a lot of money, in such a short space of time. Certain characters in our recent history have been a lot less savoury than others, but we're only going to avoid making the same mistakes again if we carefully examine where it went wrong and apportion blame accordingly without picking favourites. ultimately our spending on wages suddenly went out of control, just as we plummeted out of the champions league. We started to make a lot of bad moves in the transfer market and we've wound up paying the price. We're not going to be in a hicks and gillette situation again, so the lesson is to keep control of wages, and keep the focus on getting value for money.
