United Thread 2015/16

[Thaksinssoldier]

According to the Mail, United's players are not allowed to go up for the buffet at breakfast or lunch until Van Gaal has returned from the servery hatch.

Perhaps this is his way of ensuring that Luke Shaw loses weight

Probably just making sure that the meat used is not fit for consumption.

History and all that.

 

[Blue Hefner]

LVG will steady the ship, clear out all of the deadwood and South Americans, sign some solid, subservient players, but with no creativity.

Add the lack of entertainment, with his ability to piss people off, then a decision will be inevitable. Being an eternal optimist, whoever takes over from LVG will have a much better foundation to build on, than the person following SAF and Moyes.

Really?
Who ever takes over, if in the near future, will not have a solid foundation. Your keeper is probably going to leave, your defence is shit, midfield slow and you don't have any strikers

 

[shallyman]

Is that specific to Utd though, couldn't say, Arsenal have the same story?

My point is that the on pitch rivalry doesn't really exist and has never really existed it's just a way of TV companies to create a bigger audience

Don't understand your 'on the pitch' rivalry idea. Rivalry can be generated by fans, players, manager or post code. For instance, the fisty cuffs we had with Arsenal for over a decade was generated by the players. (Winterburn - McClair brawl, Wright - Schmeichel, Keown - RVN, Keane - Vieria, Fabrega - Pizza)

 

[Phil1]

Please, please, let Ryan Giggs take over from the funny faced one.
The transition from champions to Europa league contenders will be complete.
Not only that, the scramble from the media to get the rest of the class of 92 involved in some way, will see all of their reputations tarnished as utd fall from grace.
It's going to be glorious watching the family man go back to the 'United Way' of a 4-4-2, not realising that it's pretty much unworkable theses days without the right players. Let them romanticise on the past whilst we forge ahead with the future.
This weekends fixture for them illustrates perfectly what's in store. Two has-beens clinging on to some notion that they're still relevent whilst the rest of the football world points and sniggers.

 

[softlad]

Like Fowler, Gerrard and Carragher?

Or Mo Johnston signing for Rangers?

 

[laserblue]

Don't think they are married, although De Gea and is entire family are dyed in the wool Atletico fans. Signing for Madrid is like an Everton fan joining Liverpool. His girlfriend works in the media in Madrid and made a comment that Manchester is like the back of a fridge. So this seems to be the main force behind his desire to move. Don't think that by dropping him helped matters, if anything it pushed him into the arms of Real Madrid.

Fowler, McManaman, Carragher and Gerrard were all Everton fans.

 

[Blue Hefner]

Don't understand your 'on the pitch' rivalry idea. Rivalry can be generated by fans, players, manager or post code. For instance, the fisty cuffs we had with Arsenal for over a decade was generated by the players. (Winterburn - McClair brawl, Wright - Schmeichel, Keown - RVN, Keane - Vieria, Fabrega - Pizza)

The incident with Arsenal was as a result of on pitch rivalry ie both challenging for and winning the league in recent yrs, that isn't and, like I said earlier has never really been the case with United/Liverpool

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

About the game on Saturday and its rivalry:

I'm 32 and don't ever remember United and Liverpool ever really competing with each other. United were dominant over the last 20yrs but Liverpool never challenged them like City, Arsenal and Chelsea even Blackburn over that time. And given that United didn't win the league for years before Fergusson came, I can't imagine that United ever really challenged Liverpool in the 70s/80s

I'm not a football historian so would happily be corrected but it seems that other than their 19/20 times(yawn) they have had very little, on the pitch competitive rivalry?

There was a long period when there was a top 4 of Rags, Pool, Arse, Chelsea. There is a short list of teams that have made top 4 outside these teams in the last say 30 years and some on the list have fallen away massively over recent years (Blackburn, Leeds, Villa). Tottenham and Everton have been consistently close but mostly 5th or worse so I guess Rags v Pool is a top end rivalry however I can’t remember them both finishing top 2, don’t know when that would have happened last? Arse and Chelsea would have been the biggest immediate rivals in terms of final table placing.

 

[sir baconface]

Well, apparently it was Phil Neville who started thrapping over Martial back in the Moyes days. Giggs kept tabs on him ever since and put his neck on the block for LVG to make the signing. I think the comment from LVG pretty much indicates that. And that Giggs is being groomed as the next manager. I think that LVG days will be numbered as soon as the Likes of Giggs, Butt and Scholes decide he's pissed too many people off and gang up on him. I think this will happen before people get pissed off with the possession football philosophy.

Et tu, Brute? This is what we are all hoping for.

Giggs's loyalty is legendary.

 

[Blue Hefner]

There was a long period when there was a top 4 of Rags, Pool, Arse, Chelsea. There is a short list of teams that have made top 4 outside these teams in the last say 30 years and some on the list have fallen away massively over recent years (Blackburn, Leeds, Villa). Tottenham and Everton have been consistently close but mostly 5th or worse so I guess Rags v Pool is a top end rivalry however I can’t remember them both finishing top 2, don’t know when that would have happened last? Arse and Chelsea would have been the biggest immediate rivals in terms of final table placing.

That's what I'm getting at. Their on pitch rivalry isn't any bigger, probably less, than the other teams that have challenged in the past. Although Liverpool were a fixture in the top4, they were a fixture in the same way Arsenal have been recently

 

[bluemoon98]

De gea has signed a 5 year contract

 

[Gundogan's Moustache]

Bit of a kick in the balls until next summer not going to lie

 

[MCFC1993]

Look who's bitter now...

 

[kinkysdribble]

In my opinion, if this had not been a EURO season, De Gea would've just sat out this season and moved on then, but fair play to De Gea he must passionately want to play for Spain, the RAGs have blindly Stumbled onto a winner here, but I wouldn't be surprised if he still moves on at the end of the season but they'll get a shed load of dosh that they can spunk on some other player

 

[BigOscar]

Lovely pay day for the lad before moving for a set fee next summer. It'll be interesting to see what the release clause is, but I'm sure the rag BS machine will try and convince the unwashed masses that he's just had a sudden change of heart and wants to play for "the greatest club in the world" for 5 more years. Then change their story next summer when they sell him for £20m

 

[Silva2021]

As much as we would like to see De Gea on the bench and leave on a free, really it is in no-ones best interest that is involved.

De Gea will want to play, up his wages and also security (length of contract for injuries, loss of form etc.).
United want him to play and also receive money when he moves
Mendes wants to get him his move and not on a free
Madrid want the keeper for as cheap as possible for the start of next season (I'm sure they also want him playing in someways).

So Mendes has to get the contract that both United and Madrid are happy with and that is the challenge. I can imagine it will be a buy out fee which will seem higher then it really is as I am sure loyalty bonus will be used from the buy out clause as opposed to a signing on fee paid by Madrid to help make the United faithful think that Woodward is some kind of genius. Also with the additional wages etc. over his basic plus any signing bonus will mean that De Gea's benefits. It is then how much Madrid are willing to pay and how much United are willing to settle for.

Still I am sure questions will be asked anytime a mistake is made and this is not a player playing for a move but a player waiting to move on.

 

[Chris in London]

About the game on Saturday and its rivalry:

I'm 32 and don't ever remember United and Liverpool ever really competing with each other. United were dominant over the last 20yrs but Liverpool never challenged them like City, Arsenal and Chelsea even Blackburn over that time. And given that United didn't win the league for years before Fergusson came, I can't imagine that United ever really challenged Liverpool in the 70s/80s

I'm not a football historian so would happily be corrected but it seems that other than their 19/20 times(yawn) they have had very little, on the pitch competitive rivalry?

I've just posted this in a thread in the main forum. Seems also relevant here.

Long post. Sorry.

The rivalry issue is an interesting one.

Does anyone who is say 40 or older remember United saying that Liverpool were their main rivals in the 80s? Me neither. To Liverpool, the rags were insignificant in the 80s. They (Liverpool) considered themselves (with some justification) a cut above all other teams. Their only true rivals were Everton, who were not just their closest rivals geographically but in the mid 80s in particular were as close to being on a par with Liverpool as any team. Sure any Manchester/Merseyside clash was a big affair, but then so was a game against Spurs or Arsenal. The real debate at the time was whether the Merseyside derby, the Manchester derby or the North London derby was the most intense affair. Probably in the 80s the Merseyside derby was the honest answer as they had trophies to fight each other for as well as local pride. But the supposed Liverpool-United rivalry was simply non-existent as a talking point in sport.

Ferguson changed that particular landscape. His stated intention on taking over at United was, famously, to 'knock Liverpool off their fucking perch'. Nonetheless as is well documented his first few years at the swamp saw him closer to getting axed than to challenging Liverpool. This of course was the time when he spent £20m (which in today's market would probably come it around £200m) on a new team that got stuffed 5-1 by us in our first season after promotion. He described that in his first autobiography as the most embarrassing and humiliating defeat of his career. (There's been a worse one since but that's another story.) This is IMHO important and I will come back to it.

As time went by, the period in which the rags became noticeably stronger coincided with Liverpool's star beginning to fade and the rise of Arsenal first under George Graham and later under Wenger. There were however a few years in the early Ferguson period when Liverpool and the rags were direct rivals in league terms.It is interesting that in that period, the very early 90s, Ferguson rarely said anything controversial about the Liverpool-United rivalry. He certainly did not talk it up at that point in anything like the manner he would do in later years.

This is where Ferguson's own personality comes into the picture more clearly. Ferguson rarely said anything without an ulterior motive. 'Fergie's mind games' became by-words for it. So it is interesting to look at the point at which he started to talk up the Liverpool rivalry, and compare that with how he talked up (or down) other rivals and rivalries.

But first, back to the 5-1. You got a clearer insight into Ferguson's views on us and that particular defeat after the rags beat us 5-0 at the swamp in a midweek game in about 1994/5. Ferguson said afterwards he felt for our manager at the time (Horton?) because, said Ferguson, he would be 'goaded for months'. This IMO tells you a lot about Ferguson - all the times he would be out with his wife, or stop to put petrol in his car and a City fan asked him 'what time is it? Five past United!' hurt, and hurt deeply. One of the ways in which Ferguson - never one to turn the other cheek - got his revenge for that particular humiliation was by emphasising and highlighting how insignificant we were to them - and of course, humiliating City with their insignificance in the process. He made the point immediately after that 5-0 defeat that United had bigger fish to fry. It wasn't the result that defined their season (as by implication, and in fairness with some justification, it had been for us in 1989). The insinuation was that we were small time in our mentality for looking at that win as the be-all and end-all of our season and not simply a particularly satisfying three points. 'We're bigger than that, and you're not' is basically what he was saying. It was a calculated insult, as all Taggart's insults tended to be.

Of course City have always been United's direct rivals, it is mischievous or idiotic to pretend otherwise, but rarely has that rivalry taken any form other than the historic/geographic. In my lifetime, only in the late 60s have we been direct rivals in terms of challenging for honours prior to the takeover. In the 70s each had limited success in the cup competitions but IIRC City had by a distance the better of it in the league most of the time - we were challenging for the title while they were being relegated - and by the 80s we had started to become a yo-yo club. However the fierce rivalry between us and them despite neither being a direct competitor of the other during that period needs no explanation.

The mid 90s was really IIRC the point at which Ferguson really started talking up the United-Liverpool rivalry. We of course spent the second half of the 90s outside the top flight, and whilst Blackburn and in particular Arsenal were more credible title challengers to the rags, ferguson was keen to talk up a rivalry in which United more often than not would be the winners. This is interesting: the way in which Ferguson belittled his actual challengers by talking up the rivalry with a team who in purely footballing terms was much less of a threat, and bigged up United by pointing to a rivalry with inferior opposition. Sure Liverpool would win games against United from time to time, but they never really threatened United's dominance during the mid 90s and have not done ever since.

You can see the same pattern repeating itself in the United-Arsenal rivalry of the late 90s/early 00s, where despite there being a huge amount of antipathy between (say) Vieira and Keane (fights in the tunnel, pizzas being thrown around etc) Ferguson talked up not the very real and very intense rivalry with Arsenal but the Liverpool rivalry (which was also real and intense but did not involve a fellow title challenger). Later, when Chelsea and United were the main title rivals to each other in the mid-late 00s, I remember Ferguson saying that United-Chelsea games had none of the spice or history of the "great United-Arsenal rivalry" of some years previously, which of course at the time he had talked down. Funny, you don't hear much about the United-Arsenal rivalry these days unless you're watching repeats of the Premier League Years on Sky.

You can see this pattern continuing through to the end of the Ferguson era. There is simply no question but that City were United's main rivals on and off the pitch from about the time Mancini took over until the end of the Ferguson era. (There may be some truth in the idea that Ferguson went when he did because he saw what the future held.) However he maintained his tactic, employed for the previous 20 years, of belittling his main rivals in favour of some fierce rivalry with a team who weren't actually a direct threat. Once again, the Liverpool rivalry was talked up and the City rivalry minimised.

And this is the point: when Ferguson gave his 'opinion' on the state of United's rivalry with AN Other club, he did not do so as a sort of football historian, keen to ensure the current state of the game was captured for posterity, he did so in order to obtain a competitive advantage on or off the field. He belittled us by reduced us to the status of 'irrelevant', even though we have been the rags' main geographical rivals for over a century. (If you're a kid growing up in Greater Manchester in the late 90s/early 00s, why would you want to support an irrelevance?) He largely ignored the rivalry with Liverpool for the brief period they were actually direct competitors only to talk it up when their title threat had faded and died and he had a number of titles under his belt. He minimised the rivalry with Arsenal when it was real only to talk it up when Chelsea were the main threat. He maintained his tactic of belittling us as the noisy neighbours (another of his turns of phrase that has passed into football's vocabulary) when Chelsea were struggling after Mourinho's departure and we were challenging them in the latter stages of both cup competitions and in the league.

And United supporters, in the main, have swallowed this.

So when some rag pops up, as this laughable incident shows, and says 'Barcelona and Liverpool are our rivals' it is neither true historically, nor in geographical terms, nor is it true in terms of either team being direct competitors (unless he is talking about whether Liverpool can pip them to that fourth Champions League place). It is simply swallowing and regurgitating a myth Ferguson built for his own purposes.

In the same way, United were our historical rivals even when we were two leagues apart, they are our main geographical rivals and always have been. We are competing, even more so now both clubs are global entities, against them for supporters in Ardwick and Adelaide, Beswick and Beijing, Castlefield and Calcutta.

But in footballing terms, Chelsea are plainly our rivals now. Barring the same six points that are available in our two games against them that are also available in our two games against leicester, the rags are a complete irrelevance.

 

[mrtwiceaseason]

He'll sign but he'll till go Madrid next summer although probably for more than 29m

Dangerous game would Madrid be willing to pay that, and he would miss out on a large signing on fee if he signed.
His best option would be to do nothing and see who blinks first in the January window ?

 

[inbetween]

I don't think Madrid ever really wanted De Gea because they would of made it happen sooner. It looks like he will stay now after signing a new contract. United can now seemingly ask for considerably more if Madrid want him. It seems to me he wants to play football and he wasn't shown enough interest by Madrid to make it happen. It doesn't make sense that United would pay him a lot of money for a year and now later let him go for peanuts.

 

[Cheesy]

De Gea has been told he won't get selected for the Euro's if he doesn't play.

United tell De Gea he won't play unless he signs a new contract.

De Gea agrees as long as the release clause is an amount that Real are happy to part with next summer.

De Gea buggers off to Real as soon as summer window opens.