7 Hag’s biggest issue came because of his pursuit of Frenkie de Jong, something that was completely driven by 7 Hag and left them reeling at the end of the window when he finally gave up. Quite why he thought de Jong would come I don’t know, Barca were trying to force him out and he still didn’t want to play there, it was well reported that ETH was happy to continue waiting for the situation to play out when those at United would have moved on a bit quicker. Once that failed and the season started disastrously, they were scrambling, they end up paying double/triple the market value for Antony and they give Madrid the deal of a lifetime for a Casemiro with serious mileage in his legs.
A similar type of approach ends up burning them in his second summer, they want Kane but he goes to Bayern, they panic and buy Hojlund a couple of years too early, they can’t get rid of Maguire and McTominay and they end up doing the panic of all panics for Amrabat at the death of the window. It was two windows eerily similar to when David Moyes took over, time wasted chasing players that were never joining and eventually panic buying players that the manager knew would at least listen to him, regardless of their actual level.
I imagine we have a plan for this window, bringing Slot in means we can continue with our profile of player for most positions, we can continue to aim U-25 and we’re pretty well versed in spotting a dickhead now so character assessments should be spot on.
