Manchester United are in something of a mess and it could end in bankruptcy. But should they sell Bruno Fernandes?
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Man Utd between rock and hard place
Spurs are viewed, by everyone outside of the club, as a team whose club motto should be ‘flatter to deceive’
A team which is financially potent (most profitable team in the Premier League) plays good football most of the time but has a long and storied history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
They sign players who are either young up and comers whose career will be derailed at Spurs mostly or old players looking for that final low pressure well paid job.
Everything I’ve just said describes Man United. They can now add ‘slips on obvious banana skins’ to their rap sheet after losing to Spurs in the final….who loses to Spurs?
I dunno if anyone ever reads published accounts but according to accounts Man United would not have “gone bankrupt” in December if earthworm Jim hadn’t saved them. They’d have been restricted as to their options but that’s simply not true.
However, the lack of European football next year means United are at the bottom of a six foot hole waiting for the dirt to be piled on. Two seasons out of European football and we might actually see United go bankrupt. Summer will be a rough time, gamble and let Amorim spend in the hope they’ll make the Champions League and keep the wolves at bay but also ensure the death of the club if they don’t.
Or
Do everything cheap. Essentially become Roy Hodgson and Hicks and Gillette’s Liverpool. Pick up players like Konchesky for £2m and Andriy Voronin for free and likely stay out of administration but set the club on a 5-10 year path of mediocrity?
Lee
READ: Sell Bruno Fernandes? Man Utd need him to lead rebuild, not pay for it…
You can’t sell Bruno even if it makes senseI’m going to start this email by saying that I don’t think United should sell Bruno, nor do I want him to leave. But there is an argument to be made that his sale might not be the worst thing ever.
United are about to sign Cunha. He has 15 goals and six assists last season v Bruno’s 8 goals and 11 assists. Cunha played 3 fewer games. So Cunha could replace Bruno’s attacking output, at least in terms of goal involvements, if not in terms of creating chances for our non-existent strikers.
There is also an argument that United would be better without Bruno because he gives the ball away so much. This could be said to have cost us in the Europa League final in which he was otherwise anonymous (despite getting a Whoscored rating of 7.39). I always think he’s United’s Steven Gerrard but is he in fact our Coutinho?
Selling Bruno would provide significant funds – not selling for less than £100M, which would be almost pure profit – which we could invest wisely in 2/3 young players for big needs within the squad.
Now, having said all that with a straight face, United should not entertain Bruno’s sale this summer (unless silly money is offered – £150M plus) for three reasons:
Hes our best player and one of only four players in their prime we can rely (possibly five with Cunha coming in)
There’s no guarantee anyone will replace his contribution – even Cunha is outscoring his xG massively already so a regression to the mean will mean a drop in his output.
I don’t trust United to replace him
Bruno plus Cunha means United score more goals next year, even without a striker. No Bruno leaves us where we are with no guarantee that anyone in the team is going to replace his output. We wouldn’t even be able to spend the money on the quality of player that could guarantee replacing his output because they all want to play in the Champions League and not for a team that trades on its history rather than the quality on the pitch.
In short, don’t go Bruno.
Ashmundo
READ: Man United transfer news LIVE: Everybody wants to join Chelsea instead!
The tide is turning…
Yes, Robert Birmingham, as Ed says, Man Utd are in Malaysia for money – £8m for that loss and the Hong Kong game if I am correct – but it doesn’t explain why there though.
They can’t go to North America yet because of the World Club thing (but will once that’s ended), they certainly can’t do Europe (but Sweden is okay because it’s Sweden) as that’s rubbing salt into the wounds, and they can’t do the Middle East because that would result in media questions about that Sheikh fella just as they complain about having no money.
That leaves S. America, which was never going to be likely, Africa (no money in it), and the Far East, which is where they are. The club needs all the income it can get, and also playing at home in August will help with this.
As an aside, I now live in the Far East and the people are pissed. A chance to see their team and that’s what gets served up. It won’t mean anything to the club, but fans (those who did attend – it was half full in KL) have saved up for this for months, so you can imagine that being beaten by a team that technically does not exist is far from amusing for them.
The ramifications of years of ineptitude is catching up with the club, because if the solid fan base in this part of the World is turning against them, it will take years to get it back, if ever.
Mike D
Something about Scouse GalacticosI am surprised that Ed Ern’s contribution to Wednesday’s Mailbox did not receive any rebukes on Thursday. Not to be snide but I think this may be because it was extremely long and I’m not sure rival fans bothered reading it all the way through. I’m a Liverpool fan but even I found parts of it to be utterly preposterous, though.
To his great credit, Ed rightly acknowledges the great job FSG has done in running the club, and admits he had been wrong about them previously, specifically about “completely throwing all the good work away with pointless penny pinching” in 2019-2021 when LFC was on top.
To his great discredit, Ed has decided to somehow repeat this mistake like-for-like, and is now trying to convince himself that this moment is “a near unique opportunity” to “start a dynasty” and “rival even the Real Madrids of this world”. It’s a baffling lack of perspective/awareness from someone who began by acknowledging a previous lack of perspective/awareness.
FSG have owned and operated the club for 15 years now. They have an established track record of making excellent, if financially conservative, decisions. They have stated repeatedly from the beginning in 2010 that they would operate the club within its own means, and that they would always reinvest any money generated by the club into itself. They have lived up to this promise and delivered more than I had ever dared hope Liverpool would achieve in a football landscape competing with the likes of City/Chelsea/PSG/Newcastle/Chinese-clubs-10-years-ago/Saudi-clubs-2-years-ago. They brought in Suarez, they brought in Allison and Virgil, they offered 120m for Felipe Caicedo, they are working on major deals this summer.
FSG does not reinvest the club’s money into itself each and every year, though; the money is sometimes rolled over to future windows, and this upsets a lot of fans. These fans have either missed the fact that LFC has won two league titles in 35 years and both came in seasons when the club did basically nothing in the transfer window, or they simply care more about transfers than they do about effective football club management, who knows.
It was always a mistake to interpret FSG’s general fiscal conservatism as a lack of ambition from club management/ownership, or as a sign of greed/them taking money out of the club. But it is also a mistake to interpret FSG loosening the purse strings for opportunistic luxury purchases like Suarez/Allison/Caicedo/Wirtz as the start of an era of Scouse Galacticos, rather than exceptions to the rule/approach which has served LFC so well over the last 15 years and will hopefully continue to see us with a club that we can be wholly proud to support.
Oliver (sidenote: if City’s FFP/PSR charges are confirmed, we could have already been talking about an FSG-led LFC dynasty in English football) Dziggel, Geneva Switzerland
Why the fuss over Chelsea?
There seems to be a big deal being made of the fact that Chelsea have become the first English club to win all 3 ‘major’ European trophies.
The Europa Conference League final has only been played 4 times and I suspect that any ambitious team will still be aiming for the Champions League and would see even a drop into the Europa League as a failure, rather than aiming to match Chelsea’s majestic European treble.
Chelsea were not in the Conference League because they qualified for the Europa League but Man Utd winning the FA Cup put them in there instead, but they did put themselves in a position to qualify for the Europa League and were then shifted to the Conference League due to Utd’s FA Cup win because ‘them’s the rules’.
Having said all that, I would love Arsenal to win any European trophy as it might shut Stewie Griffin up (it wouldn’t) and although, unlike some ‘supporters, I don’t see winning trophies as the be all and end all (it is possible to just enjoy football for the game that it is) it is very enjoyable.
Keep up the good work, 365. It gets me through the day.
Dave AFC
Chelsea > Arsenal next season
Ok so May isn’t even out yet, but here’s a hot take for you:
Chelsea to finish above Arsenal in the Premier League next season.
Woah there nelly, I hear you say. But hear me out.
Firstly, let’s look at Arsenal. Three consecutive years (four, if you count the collapsed bid for Champions League football in 2022) of coming up short with largely the same group of players. This season has given us strong hints it is starting to take its toll.
If they couldn’t deal with the pressure of the last few years, how is it going to be in this coming season – the 5th proper year of the Arteta project – where the expectations now shift from HOPING to EXPECTING to win a trophy? They’ll probably get that striker they need, but it won’t be the cure for all ills. They still lack squad depth. They still lack knowhow at the business end of the season. And Arteta doesn’t help with his paranoia and touchline histrionics.
No, for me, this feels like a club coming to the end game of a project, not the start. Liverpool and Man City will definitely finish above them next year.
And so, to Chelsea. Back in the Champions League, and with that winning feeling from bagging the Conference League. And now, this afternoon, news is coming through they’re grabbing Delap from under the noses of Manchester United (lol, by the way) which surely represents an upgrade on the erratic Jackson.
If they can now get a decent goalkeeper and a dominant centre back to supplement the quality of James, Cucurella, Enzo, Caicedo, Lavia, Palmer and (presumably) Delap, then you’re looking at a side that can surely only be heading in one direction and that is upwards. It’s easy to scoff at Chelsea these last few years – and a lot of it has been entirely justified – but you just get a feeling that something might just be starting to take off at long last.
Please feel free to chuck this back in my face if Arsenal are 10 points clear at Christmas and Chelsea are looking like they fancy a return to Conference League football – but I’m confident that you’ll see a changing of the guard in London next season.
Andy H, Swansea
The red line for fandom
Badwolf wrote in yesterday about the red line for supporting a club. I’ll give you mine. I happened to grow up in Los Angeles, so have been a Los Angeles Dodgers fan ever since I knew baseball existed. That’s about 65 years worth of fandom. In recent seasons the Dodgers have been very very good, and last season (not counting the COVID season of 2020, run on very different lines), they won their first World Series in 36 years. I was thrilled. It felt great.
Well, it’s an American tradition for champion sports teams to visit the White House for a ceremony with the President. Without the slightest peep of dissent, the Dodgers went to the White House and gave Donald Trump a personalized replica jersey.
I no longer care whether they win or lose. I’ve switched my allegiance to the Chicago White Sox, a team that is unlikely to win a World Series in the rest of my lifetime, and right now is pretty bad. But I love the city of Chicago, I loved the old ballpark the Sox used to play in, and the team has spirit and heart. I’m a very happy baseball fan right now.
Peter G, Pennsylvania, USA (it can be done)
Ask Football365…
Amid the churn of clickbait and fanbaiting provocations (and yes, I do keep clicking…), I found myself wondering if there’s a space for something a touch more human on the site.
When I’m not poring over F365, I often read the entertainment website The AV Club. One of their regular features, AVQ&A, sees their writers respond to irreverent or reflective questions like “What’s your favourite piece of college-set pop culture?” or “What’s your most visceral experience in a movie theatre?” That sort of thing.
Could we have a version of this on Football365? A regular chance to ask Cooper, Stead, Winterburn, Tickner et al their genuine opinions on today’s hot topics, or ask questions that don’t need to generate 800 angry quote tweets to justify their existence?
Things like:
What one goal scored by your club still gives you chills?
Which player did you irrationally adore despite all evidence?
What’s the best atmosphere you’ve ever experienced?
Which football hill will you absolutely die on?
Is Arsenal being mocked for not winning competitions they were too good to qualify for the most Arsenal thing ever?
A feature like this might offer a useful breather from the weekly whirlwind of doom-scrolling and narrative-shaping. Even the editorial team are human (probably), so let’s hear what they actually think – off the cuff, from the heart, without needing to provoke anyone into frothing rage in the comments section.
And to the mailbox community: if you could ask the F365 staff one question – about football, or about the weird football-shaped corner of culture we all live in – what would it be?
Duncan, Bristol