Issa Diop and Declan Rice of West Ham United come out smiling to training at Rush Green (Photo by Avril Husband/West Ham United via Getty Images)
Manchester United is currently a club living on a past reputation and appearing to be adopting a scatter gun transfer policy similar to the one we were accused of until recently.
That they should be linked with both Issa Diop and Declan Rice is no big surprise – that neither should be interested in joining a fading club should be the reality.
Out of the Champions League and scrabbling around for new blood – currently unsuccessfully – under an inexperienced PL manager with everything to prove is not an exciting prospect.
That they were fading under Jose Mourinho – who lump him or like him has a decent track record – shows this has been a club in decline from David Moyes onwards.
The United squad right now look disinterested with Paul Pogba chatting publicly about wanting a move – one begins to see why Ferguson got rid perhaps!
Meanwhile, the Hammers under Pellegrini is a club on the up with top signings arriving and a youth policy which becomes more and more impressive.
I wrote recently that the top six was not impossible us this season and I think United are the most vulnerable with the financially limited Arsenal not far behind them.
They are not an appealing prospect – salary aside – for young players these days and I really do feel that the Irons can overtake them in the PL this season.
Wolves and Leicester are teams who will also be battling towards the top of the table assuming, in the case of the Foxes, that Harry Maguire remains – yet another United target.
The post-Ferguson years have been a disaster by their standards with little of the infrastructure he put in remaining in place.
And I don’t feel that either of our big two should even look in that direction although no doubt Diop’s agents will be looking to us for an improved deal on the back of their alleged interest which may have been whipped up for precisely that purpose.
Things are looking much rosier in the claret and blue garden right now as firm words come from the club making it clear that nobody is going anywhere.
Let’s hope and believe it will stay that way.
I think this is absolutely spot on Hugh, was thinking the same myself this morning. However, the one threat the fading but financially powerful clubs like United do pose is the ability (along with players’ agents) to force the challenger clubs like us, Leicester, Wolves to keep handing out new and very expensive contracts to keep the likes of Rice, Arnie and Diop (and Lanzini is next, I assume). This in turn impacts our ability to recruit, due to FFP rules, which are a conspiracy to enable the big clubs to continue to dominate.
So as well as keeping our best players, to sustain a real challenge it is just as important to keep producing top home-grown talent (factor in the rules around percentage of home-grown players and this is even more imperative). On this point, I’m not sure we are in as strong a position. Rice has been the only clear success from the academy in recent years and the under 23s were relegated. If we can get this right, we will be major players. If not, we won’t, in my view.
Ruislip Hammer makes some excellent points. Never thought about the big guns pushing up the challengers wage budget.
Imagine a league with financial parity. FFP was only introduced to put everybody else in their place, it’s made it so much tougher to move to the next level. They pretend it’s to protect clubs but look at how many teams are still struggling with FFP, and the penalties of fines and points docking, how will that help the club survive?