Sex toys and Manchester United’s soul: deadline day and the lessons learned
|
Version 0 of 1. 1. Have Manchester United lost their soul? Quite possibly, yes. It was not so much the kamikaze spending, forking out more than even Paris Saint-Germain were prepared to pay for Ángel Di María and readily stumping up for Radamel Falcao when Real Madrid and others thought he was overpriced, as deciding Danny Welbeck was surplus to requirements and shipping him out to Arsenal. That was the piece of business that prompted Mike Phelan, relic of the Alex Ferguson years, to talk of a thread being broken and the club losing sight of the Manchester United way. Not only was Welbeck a local product who had come up through the youth ranks but he was out of the club before the new manager, Louis van Gaal, had given himself time to take a proper look at him. United’s commitment to giving youth its chance is enshrined on the interior walls of its academy building, with pictures of Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes and co growing up to become treble winners. It is possibly no accident that Van Gaal no longer holds his press conferences in the same room, though in fairness to the new regime Welbeck was taking his time to live up to the standards of his illustrious predecessors and outside Peter Pan pantomimes fairytales do not come true just by wishing. United supporters have been crying out for major signings for years now and, while the club likes to believe it operates slightly differently from everyone else, the very real prospect of a second season out of Europe was enough to park romance and tradition in the long grass for a while as restoration work took place on the brand. 2. Is Mario Balotelli a bargain at £16m? According to the football database responsible for claiming United paid too much for Di María and Luke Shaw, Liverpool got Balotelli on the cheap since the Italian striker is worth up to £10m more. Everyone already knew that, though, surely? The reason Balotelli’s price has been dropping is because he has off-field and sometimes on-field issues that adversely affect his footballing contribution. The reason United have been overpaying for players is that they are to some extent desperate and all the selling clubs in Europe know it. The whole point of football transfers is that they do not, and never will, operate according to some universally agreed sliding scale based on fairness and value. Each deal is unique, each contains its own element of risk. Liverpool’s new signing is riskier than most but strikers are changing hands in the Championship for upwards of £10m. In any case he is neither the bargain of the summer nor the biggest gamble. That would be the extravagantly gifted but infuriatingly fitful Hatem Ben Arfa, with a loan season at Hull in which to prove his critics wrong. 3. Why did Manchester City let Álvaro Negredo out on loan? Good question, difficult to answer. Manuel Pellegrini has repeatedly stated his intention to have two quality options for every position. That means four strikers, and City now have only three, which has to be a cause for concern when Sergio Agüero missed so much of last season through injury. Negredo has joined Valencia despite a fitness problem of his own: he still needs time to recover from a metatarsal injury. Though his performances fell away towards the end of the last campaign he was quite brilliant on occasion in the first half of the season. It is possible that City were resigned to not having Negredo anyway for the first few months and equally possible that he has fallen behind Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic in the pecking order. As Valencia have agreed to buy the striker next year it was an opportunity to make a profit on a fringe player and City could now be looking around with a view to recruiting in January. Yet they are a club who normally pride themselves on doing business early and not leaving themselves short. 4. Which supporters have endured the most frustrating summer? Has to be those hardy souls in Monaco, despite competition from Southampton. The Saints may have sold most of their star names and lost a promising manager but Ronald Koeman can still put out a decent team and the Southampton academy system is the envy of the country. There is no such compensation for the Monegasques, who in addition to having to watch their team play on the roof of a car park (copyright: Sir A Ferguson), have just lost James Rodríguez and Falcao in succession, with nothing resembling like-for-like replacements coming in. With season ticket prices having gone up in summer, supporters who paid in advance are now demanding refunds. Quite right too. Dmitry Rybolovlev must think Monaco residents are made of money. 5. So who did the best business? Chelsea. Finding someone to pay £50m for David Luiz was sensational work in itself, bringing in Cesc Fàbregas and Diego Costa with the proceeds must have made José Mourinho a very happy man. Until the late addition of Loïc Rémy for an extra £10m, Chelsea’s incomings were paid for by their outgoings, neat work as long as one is prepared to forget the hit they took on Fernando Torres, who quietly departed these shores for nothing on the very day Di María turned up as the new most expensive British signing. Chelsea also have a ludicrous 26 players on loan, which is extreme and probably reprehensible, yet when they can ask Thibaut Courtois to take over from Petr Cech at a time of their choosing or persuade Everton to part with an eye-watering £28m for Romelu Lukaku it all begins to make a certain sort of sense. 6. Have supporters had enough of the transfer window hoopla? Sex toys to enliven Sky’s interminably dull coverage of the last day could be here to stay, along with banners objecting to the price and venality of modern football. Interactions between a disenfranchised public and beleaguered TV reporters are now more noteworthy than the transfers being reported. Sky may have to rethink its rules of engagement, perhaps its slogan too. Stubbornly some people still want to believe in better. |