Ed Woodward, as usual, is looking to sign a big name player for big money. Never mind that his dithering means it will probably require the whole of the transfer window to make that one signing! In his eyes it will improve the team and that’s all that matters.
After all look at how his other big money signings have markedly upped United’s stature as a club. (more…)
Manchester United were supposed to undergo a complete overhaul. Ole Gunnar Solskjær was going to oversee the departure of several players who had passed their sell-by dates around three or four years ago and bring in new players to replace them. The new models would be younger and better with the emphasis on better which, let’s be honest, shouldn’t prove to be too difficult.
The positions flagged as needing strengthening were right full back, centre back, midfield and, possibly, a striker to replace the departing Lukaku. (more…)
It’s official! Ed Woodward really is an expert on football. This may come as a bit of a surprise to the vast majority of United fans, Louis van Gaal and all the ex-players who hang around Old Trafford these days. They think he is clueless. They think he keeps buying the wrong players and failing to buy the right ones.
Wrong! Ed knows what he is doing and disagreeing with the club’s most famous manager will prove that to be the case.
On the one occasion he probably should have disagreed with Sir Alex Ferguson, he didn’t, and David Moyes was appointed as manager. We all know how that one turned out. (more…)
Nice one Gareth! His latest wheeze is that anybody expecting to play for his England team in the future should be playing regularly at their club.
He did leave the statement open to a little interpretation in that if, for example, he wanted to pick a team made up entirely of players from the Championship, then this would not represent a problem.
If he sticks with Premier League players then his team will not be competing at the top, (not that it has done anyway since 1966).
If he puts his new rule into immediate practice then his next team will contain Jordan Pickford, Kyle Walker, Kieran Trippier, Harry Maguire, Dele Alli, Harry Kane and some Vanarama Conference League players. (more…)
How is a fat football agent getting so much publicity? Mino Raiola is “acting on behalf of” Paul Pogba so, when he decides to insult Paul Scholes on social media, it is actually Pogba doing the insulting.
Now we know that isn’t the case and that the French player probably numbers Scholes amongst his favourite midfielders of all time. So why does he insist on continuing to employ an arrogant, obnoxious, fat and, admittedly rich, (which we had to include otherwise Bernard Manning would be spinning), so-and-so who, when he isn’t trying to extort as much money as possible from his clients and football clubs, is busy telling everybody else what to do. (more…)
Can Chelsea really afford to sell Eden Hazard? Can they afford not to? It’s the age old question of whether the player wants to leave and if he should be kept against his will.
Hazard has recently expressed a desire to play Champion’s League football which, having only missed two seasons during his time at the club, is a little selfish.
Now, with Maurizio Sarri in charge, Manchester United and Arsenal looking nothing more than average and only Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester City to concern them, Chelsea should be fairly confident of a top four finish this season meaning that he would return to Europe’s top competition next time out. (more…)
So, thanks to a World Cup campaign which saw England drawn in a very easy group, (Belgium apart but two nations qualified anyway), saw them beat Tunisia, Panama, Colombia and Sweden before finally succumbing to yet another team BELOW them in the world rankings, Croatia, in the semi-finals, the team have risen to a lofty sixth place in the current standings.
This is mainly due to the rest of the world, with the exception of France and Croatia, suddenly forgetting how to play the beautiful game and becoming pretty average in the process.
Just for the record, and despite the way FIFA reaches these strange conclusions, England is not the sixth best footballing nation on earth. (more…)
It would appear that Tottenham Hotspur will need to play some more games at Wembley this season as, according to The Guardian amongst others, their new ground has not yet been granted a safety certificate and it looks as though there will be a delay in doing so.
This, of course, is grossly unfair, unless they play ALL this season’s games at Wembley.
How, for example, can they play two or three teams at the national stadium, a ground they are now used to and treat like “home from home” and then play others at a brand new ground which will be as foreign to them as it will to the opposition? There will be a marked disadvantage for the clubs who meet them at Wembley. (more…)
This, if it finally happens, is something we here at WSA have been championing for years. We even wrote a short article for HITC on the very subject back in 2013 so the need has been there for more than five years.
At present there is a short in the circuit which supposedly joins the manager to the board and CEO.
The system is half and half. It is still the old fashioned one where the manager hands in a list of players he thinks he requires for the club to buy, and the present day one where somebody above the manager decides which will be bought and which won’t based on what the club actually NEEDS as opposed to what the manager WANTS. (more…)
Apparently the transfer of Toby Alderweireld to Manchester United was a non-starter. Ed Woodward and Daniel Levy only spoke once during the summer and that was at the instigation of the Spurs chief who was enquiring about United players.
Yerry Mina was considered too expensive when the extortionate agent’s fees were factored in and Jerome Boateng was never a serious consideration due to his proneness to injury and potentially spending as much time on the Old Trafford treatment table as Bastian Schweinsteiger and Owen Hargreaves, (also bought from Bayern Münich), before him.
Diego Godin was a possibility until it became obvious that he had no intention of leaving AtlĂ©tico Madrid and, thanks to a bit of imaginative skullduggery by his agent, succeeded in negotiating a new contract. (more…)
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 