Manchester United Thread 2024/25 - Teamtalk/Transfers/Gossip Mod Note in OP 26.09.24

Rabiot on a free is a no brainer. 2 year deal with an option to extend, he'll get a decent wage and signing on fee, incentivise the contract too. He's only 29 so we could conceivably get 4 or 5 good years out of him. Experienced, a bit of bite to him and in a position we are dreadfully short in. More plusses than potential negatives imo.

If you got a gy like Ugarte too (and maybe you couldn't) I think it would set our midfield up very well.
Rabiot could play with or instead of Mainoo.
Ugarte could play with Mainoo or Rabiot.
Would be two excellent profiles to add to the midfield.

Arguably, if we could only get one then Rabiot is smarter pick, profile wise given he could (imo) play with or instead of Mainoo.

Rabiot does appear to have matured since joining Juve so be no harm at least opening negotiations to see can a deal be done. Absolute no brainer to take him in that case.

Previously, but not anymore. that Tax scheme was just ended.

But even then… doesn't really matter.

What clubs in Spain are going to be after him? Would At.Madrid pay him 200k? Maybe, but they only have Olbak (350…), and Griezman ~220k on more than that, next highest is about 150k. Maybe Barca would. Real Madrid won't be in for him. No other spanish team offering that money.

In France you would only have PSG coming close, and they won't.

In Italy, I don't think AC Milan are doing that, Inter might?

In Germany, Bayern maybe? After them, nope.

In England, I don't see City, Liverpool or Arsenal going for him. Villa nope (imo - Kamara and Onana). Newcastle would have to make him their highest paid player to top 150k. Spurs would have to put him in line with their top earners to top it. Chelsea you could see, maybe.

So even if you think he would be asking for 200k or 250k base wages… wtf is offering it? I reckon you maybe have competition with Chelsea and Bayern, maybe. No one else. So on a pure wages issue, i don't see how offering 150k wouldn't be competitive with any non-Saudi offer he got, and if he went to Saudi so be it.

MDL was the starter, Yoro the development project. Throwing Yoro in the deep end as a starter would be worse than putting all the eggs in Hojlunds basket last year. Defensive errors are far more costly than Hojlunds offensive struggles.

I don't know. At times towards the middle/end of last season you'd swear the only reason for bad results was injuries and they were playing good football. He came in and talked the talk in the first season no doubt but as it unraveled last season he was looking for excuses.

Noteworthy that Juve had been trying to negotiate a new deal with Rabiot but couldn't reach an agreement. To me that would suggest he wants a long contract with a generous salary improvement on his 140k and I'm not sure we should bite on that.

I always find it insightful to see what fans of the club they are leaving are saying. Granted, they are probably coloured negatively given the player is leaving which some fans take personally, but there seems to be a consensus on Rabiot that he's a fair-weather player without much bite or passion. His five years at Juve seem to considered as the first 3 years being very poor, the 4th year being great, and the 5th year being okay/good. Few comments below.

"Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe ****!"

But at least he wasn't injury prone, though imo very expensive, wage wise, for what he provided, since he wasn't providing constant world class performances, considering his world class wages.

We had the good, the bad, and the ugly

But I will certainly miss him in the next season

excellent abilities and qualities and sometimes showed them.

Im pretty sure most of us not dropping any tears for him for one reason: he has no Grinta at all. Some would say typical moms little son attitude.

He was very good in 1 season, decent in 1 and half other seasons. The first 2.5 were bad.

I'd say his huge salary was only justified (maybe) in the last 2 seasons, but the first 2.5 were so bad that it was tough to rate him fairly.

He was at times our best midfielder, but if RABIOT is your best midfielder, you have a problem. He does have some good qualities, but our midfield needed more creativity, vision and good passing. He has none of that and his teammates weren't better (Loca is so disappointing smh).

I think Rabiot leaving gives us a good chance to build a more complete midfield.

Not hurt over this one, but really appreciate his time with us.

He was solid and his stats always looked better on paper than the field. He had some really rough spells until he had one year left on his contract (half kidding).

He was pretty reliable as a hard worker, making the easy shots/passes, maintaining control, but I never felt he could live up to an ambitious needs which is why I feel we can have a more proactive player in the role.

Same old story with Rabiot. Slightly above average player that always turns it on in his last contract year. Did that at PSG as well. Not worth the salary in my uneducated opinion.

He checked out once Allegri left. He was one of his loyalists. Makes sense

Rabiot feels like a signing we'd make prior to INEOS, a Woodward stop gap IMO.

I'm not completely against stop gaps for the right players but there has always been a bit of controversy with Rabiot, professionalism, etc and that kind of person is not what this squad needs on or off the field.

If he did come in, I'd love to be proved wrong but seems like an unnecessary risk.

The tap-in merchant has given it the here we go

When is the next one though?
Where's my central midfielder!?

Any chance of squeezing a LB in there? It would be nice to not have to play a RB there for half a season next year.

I don't believe his excuse.
but it also further plays into my theory that he was seriously effed up for a lot of last season, mentally, for whatever reasons.

If ETH sets the team up in an acceptable way then Casemiro can absolutely get back to an acceptable standard imo.

If we have teams running through us, like they did last year, then even prime Casemiro would look dire.

I think for Ugarte to arrive then Casemiro will have to leave. Not sure if this will happen though

Saudi transfer window only opened yesterday so I wouldn't rule it out yet.

Somebody is going to have to make the point.

By all reports Madrid would not go above £25m for Yoro, PSG would not go above £40m, he is 18 years old and had only one year left on contract.

So United swoop in, blow them out of the water with £52m and increase his wages from 6k p/w to 113k p/w (145k inc bonuses).

Now we hear it was Berradas pet project, he wanted a "coup" signing.

Yoro might go on to be a great player, I hope he does, but everything about this deal is classic Woodward and its strange to see people talking as if it isn't. The parallels with the Martial signing are all there and if Woodward did this people would be saying "here we go again".

Again, I'm not saying they should or shouldn't have done the deal. I just don't want to be told the same old food tastes better just because of a new label.

Cheerio

Yoro announcement should follow to take the attention away from this. Glad that it’s over.

By "Backup left sided defender" do they mean left back or just left sided CB?

I really hope they don't mean a backup LB, it should be a first choice LB brought in, Shaw has definitely proven that he isn't reliable enough.

Agree in terms of reliability however should he defy the odds and be fit, he should be first choice. It could be a big help to Rashford as well with their link up play and allow Rashford space to attack more.

Huge money for a defender, he'll need to hit the ground running let's hope the scouts are as good as they're made out to be.

Unless we go for Kadioglu to back up both Shaw and Dalot we can't move AWB.

And if Shaw goes down and Kadioglu becomes starting LB we'd be back to no back up RB.

Same with selling McTominay ASAP. We are already short a midfielder. Even after signing the (at the very least) one thats needed, selling McTominay would neccesitate a second arrival.