I'm With Stupid
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 6 May 2013
- Messages
- 20,292
Potentially, but it's still a big ask. But the reality of league football is that games against your direct rivals are less important than consistency against the teams you should (on paper) beat. They are far from the best squad in the league, but they're still better than anyone but us, Chelsea and Arsenal, perhaps being on a level with Liverpool (sans Suarez) and Spurs, perhaps slightly better when they've finished spending. So it mainly comes down to whether Van Gaal (does he have an immature nickname yet?) is able to get that consistent performance against the weaker teams. But Liverpool managed it with one of the top 3 players in the world taking a lot of the weight on his shoulders. The Rags would have to rely on something similar from Van Persie or Rooney to achieve the same. They've both done it in the past, but I'm not sure either of them have it in them to do it again. Certainly Van Persie with his injury record. Although maybe Van Gaal will be shrewder than Moyes with his fitness regime.1.618034 said:
But they've spent £120m in the last 3 windows, and they haven't added a single world class player to their first team. Mata's probably the closest they've managed. The other two are basically talented youngsters (one of which isn't even that young) and the mop. I'd be surprised to see their signings so far fire them to the title this season. It's a period of massive rebuilding for them, and so far they seem to be going for potential, rather than the finished product. But who is actually behind these buys? We know all too well the cost of changing your manager when you operate the all-powerful manager system that a lot of English clubs do. It's not just a case of having to pay off the manager and get someone new in, you then have to allow each new manager to build their own team. You end up selling perfectly decent players for less than they're worth (unless you're Chelsea, apparently) because they don't fit into the new manager's system. Do you think Van Gaal will go for Fellaini, and if not what sort of hit will they take on him? And how long with Van Gaal be around? His contract suggests not long, so what happens to the players he brings in when the next manager doesn't fancy them?
At City, you'll notice that the transition from Mancini to Pellegrini was probably the smoothest we've ever had in terms of the entire squad being settled, and that's largely down to the fact that there's a long-term vision in place at board level and the manager was chosen with the squad and style of play in mind. Compare that to Mancini coming in, and a long list of Hughes signings that no longer fitted the plan having to be farmed out on loan and then sold at a massive loss, or before that, most of Sven's signings being similarly sidelined by Hughes. Having the transfer policy decided by the manager is fine if you have a long term manager, but not so great if you're constantly chopping and changing. The rags have always done relatively well in the transfer market, probably largely down to their stability in management. It'll be interesting to see how they do with a quicker turnover of managers, especially if they're giving them all the chance to build their own system (which the Fellaini transfer would suggest they are). We've already seen Moyes being given a licence to spend close to £70m before being fired. Who's to say that £70m of players fit the system that Van Gaal wants to play? Hell. presumably the players signed so far didn't have much input from him either.
