QUOTE(aaron1717 @ Sep 8 2023, 11:27 AM)
not really, already wanna buy him since their UCL game against sporting... even go CR7 home to convince his family lagi... not as knee jerk as antony or maguire purchases... lol
Our players convinced Sir Alex to buy CR7 after a pre-season friendly with Sporting on the flight home.
It was quite unusual so I would term this as a sort of knee-jerk transfer. The club that had scouted CR7 extensively was Arsenal. And by swooping in so quickly, we actually surprised Arsenal.
Arsene Wenger had said in one of his interviews that the player he regrets on missing out most was CR7.
Sir Alex wasn't unfamiliar to knee jerk transfers. Let's not forget he signed Bebe without even seeing him play. And if I'm not mistaken, Karel Poborsky (Oh God I'm old to remember these things on the fly) after his chipped goal in Euro....96 was it? Sir Alex had as many failed transfers as he did successfuly ones, but the difference as he had a strong spine of reliable players already in the team to carry us plus his managerial genius.
The problem with our current set of players are that they are a mish mash of styles, some bought for the poeesssion based style of LvG with Ole's British insanity added with Mou's transition play and now ETH.
Ole was by far the worst as he had no real tactical nous to build team identity and went purely for the passport. Ole spent 2 seasons chasing Sancho. If we look at Ole's players : Maguire, AWB, Sancho, VDB, Dan James. Most of them were given pay packets way above their ability. VDB was a prime example of us buying a player Ole didn't want because he had to submit a list of names to Ed as secondary targets and was forced to name someone. That summer, Ole wanted Grealish (English passport!) but he went to City and Ed proceeded with the backup name of VDB which Ole never played.
So our player composition is a legacy problem from all our mismanagement of the past that ETH now has to find a solution to.