The problem(s) with United’s recruitment model is that even when we choose a narrow strategy, we don’t even do it well.
So, immediately we dismiss most of the global markets we say we will sign players from:
- England
- Scotland
- Scandinavia (apparently)
So we should be all over that market quickly, right?
No, we also want to wait until late in the window to secure the best supposed bargain despite the obvious scenario where the pool of those players will be ever decreasing the longer you wait.
We want to have our cake and eat it:
We will miss out on potentially cheaper foreign talent but offset that by not paying the cost of an extended network.
Fishing in a limited pool, rather than be first out of the blocks snapping up frees left right and centre but paying decent snout wages to snag them, we also want to get them cheap.
So that’s why we end up with:
Doherty; who nobody else was in for and is mid thirties and seemingly never available.
Ayew; who must have been considering hanging up his boots. I get the circumstances but we needed a LW back up even before Gus left and we needed a no 10 back up when he did and before Callum left.
Choudhury; a player a team in the division below were happy to offload.
We create narrow parameters, narrow them further and then shrug our shoulders and say “what else could we do?” when we don’t succeed.