** Summer Transfer Window 2011/12 Season Rumours/Signings **

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but we'll have variability depending on who we play, there's no doubt he'd increase our ability to retain the ball and would also serve as a good creative outlet.
We were good enough to win the league and get to the Cl final where we did admittedly get drubbed (in part due to sticking to our game plan rather than adapting to play Barca) we've added strength in depth, improved our set pieces, improved the variety with which we can play and if we signed Nasri for instance, (Sneijder it should be noted is similarly not exactly famed for his comfortableness with playing 4-4-2) would have increased our guile and ball retention over a never playing Hargreaves a Scholes who no longer had the stamina and an unfortunate Gibson.

People will pick it apart as much as they like and Ferguson has got it wrong on occasion but should we do all our business promptly then it would certainly be a big statement of intent.
This Nasri business is probably agent driven but we're showing we're willing to spend cash and we're not sitting on our laurels.
 
DanH84 said:
We were good enough to win the league and get to the Cl final where we did admittedly get drubbed (in part due to sticking to our game plan rather than adapting to play Barca)
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Didn't we train to adapt to Barca ? The fact is no matter what tactics we had we don't the the players to beat Barca. How many of our first 11 would get into the Barca side ? Most of Barca's would walk into our side. Unless we buy quality then i can't see us winning the CL for a long time :(
 
lee32uk said:
Didn't we train to adapt to Barca ? The fact is no matter what tactics we had we don't the the players to beat Barca. How many of our first 11 would get into the Barca side ? Most of Barca's would walk into our side. Unless we buy quality then i can't see us winning the CL for a long time :(
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You cant possibly base every purchase decision on building a team to beat Barca IF we draw then in the CL.
 
lee32uk said:
Didn't we train to adapt to Barca ? The fact is no matter what tactics we had we don't the the players to beat Barca. How many of our first 11 would get into the Barca side ? Most of Barca's would walk into our side. Unless we buy quality then i can't see us winning the CL for a long time :(
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Rubbish for a number of reasons

1- there are no let's say 3 midfielders that's are gettable that are better than Barca's 3, even if we had the ultimate muppet summer and signed Nasri, Sneijder and Modic those 3 still wouldn't be a match for Barca's midfield trio. When Inter knocked them out was it because they had the better players? No, it's because over the two legs they got it tactically spot on.

2- news flash as good as Barca are they won't win the champions league every year, in fact I'll go as far as saying they won't even win it next year (based on the fact that no team has ever retained it) so yes it's quite conceivable that United will win it again in the near future without signing everyone under the sun
 
lee32uk said:
Didn't we train to adapt to Barca ? The fact is no matter what tactics we had we don't the the players to beat Barca. How many of our first 11 would get into the Barca side ? Most of Barca's would walk into our side. Unless we buy quality then i can't see us winning the CL for a long time :(
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as placeholder said you can't base everything around Barca, he's obviously aware of them and is changing his thinking somewhat as evidenced by accepting offers for some of our utility players but he has to consider the whole season.

I was off my face but didn't we go into the Barca game with a similar line up and formation to how we approached Schalke? In a sense the Schalke games almost went too well for us and caused Ferguson to believe the same approach would work against Barca when in retrospect we'd have been better served flooding the midfield.

Bare in mind as well that the purchases we've got confirmed (or near enough) are in positions where very few people felt we needed to strengthen prior to the opening of the window, some people will see it as Ferguson not recognising the problems in central midfield but I'd say that looking at the evidence (not offering Hargreaves a p2p contract, accepting offer for Gibson, Scholes retiring) indicates that Ferguson knows that there is an issue there and will deal with it but is also keen to strengthen all over and adapt. That's indicative that there's money there and a willingness to spend it and adapt our policy as needed. It doesn't need wholesale change, simply we were good enough last season for most clubs to have said it was ace but we don't appear to be settling.

We might get the changes we make wrong, but we've shown willingness to make them and that's a large part of the battle.
 
DanH84 said:
People will pick it apart as much as they like
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If that's aimed at me, I wasn't picking anything apart just putting things into perspective with all this 'you're not going to catch Barca with those signings' talk going around.

Regarding the statement of intent, haven't most of your signings been done early over the last few years anyway? Smalling and Hernandez last season, Valencia the season before and even the likes of Nani and Anderson a few years back. In fact I can't think of anybody other than Berbatov that was left til late by Utd.
 
BaZ87 said:
If that's aimed at me, I wasn't picking anything apart just putting things into perspective with all this 'you're not going to catch Barca with those signings' talk going around.

Regarding the statement of intent, haven't most of your signings been done early over the last few years anyway? Smalling and Hernandez last season, Valencia the season before and even the likes of Nani and Anderson a few years back. In fact I can't think of anybody other than Berbatov that was left til late by Utd.
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not at you specifically actually, but they will be pretty much whomever we sign.
 
DanH84 said:
Bare in mind as well that the purchases we've got confirmed (or near enough) are in positions where very few people felt we needed to strengthen prior to the opening of the window, some people will see it as Ferguson not recognising the problems in central midfield but I'd say that looking at the evidence (not offering Hargreaves a p2p contract, accepting offer for Gibson, Scholes retiring) indicates that Ferguson knows that there is an issue there and will deal with it but is also keen to strengthen all over and adapt. That's indicative that there's money there and a willingness to spend it and adapt our policy as needed. It doesn't need wholesale change, simply we were good enough last season for most clubs to have said it was ace but we don't appear to be settling.
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Playing devil's advocate here. A few months back I remember Steve Mclaren being asked about the strength of Utd's central midfield and him saying something along the lines of Fergie believing that providing you have a strong pair of CB's and a dangerous attack then you can get away with having a weaker central midfield.

If that's the case, is it possible that you might be concentrating your efforts/money on reinforcing those areas at the expense of your midfield?
 
BaZ87 said:
Playing devil's advocate here. A few months back I remember Steve Mclaren being asked about the strength of Utd's central midfield and him saying something along the lines of Fergie believing that providing you have a strong pair of CB's and a dangerous attack then you can get away with having a weaker central midfield.

If that's the case, is it possible that you might be concentrating your efforts/money on reinforcing those areas at the expense of your midfield?
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I don't actually believe that, even when the signings haven't worked out we've never shied away from investing. Even when we had Scholes and Keane in their pomp we went for Veron, it didn't work out but Ferguson was still looking to improve. Similar to getting Hargreaves in to address an issue.
I could almost understand if the focus was on simple ball retention and getting it to your wide men but I don't believe Ferguson would settle for a weak midfield. I think nostalgia for scholes and hope for hargreaves (coupled by 4 league titles in 5 years) has been the thing that's really stayed his hand recently.
 
BaZ87 said:
Playing devil's advocate here. A few months back I remember Steve Mclaren being asked about the strength of Utd's central midfield and him saying something along the lines of Fergie believing that providing you have a strong pair of CB's and a dangerous attack then you can get away with having a weaker central midfield.

If that's the case, is it possible that you might be concentrating your efforts/money on reinforcing those areas at the expense of your midfield?
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Who in the right mind would listen to Steve Mclaren ? :D
 
According to the Times we've made a £5m bid for Clichy. There were a few links with him before the season ended but the general opinion was we were going for Enrique.

Wouldn't be a bad signing if anything came from it. He looked class a couple of seasons back but defensively has been found out over the last 2 years. Steve Clarke could hopefully address that though.
 
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