The Kraken

Scottish and a Pompey fan. What a tragedy.

Tom Cleverley is 23; might be tough for him to continue his development in the U21s... *switches annoying MLG mode off*

Chicken balti pasties from SMS used to be totes amazeballs, Norm. I haven't had one for ages though. Do they still do them? Maybe the programme shop will be turned into a balti pasty dispensary. Result.

So, for the few people who were aware of the existence of the programme shop: - was in run by/for the club? - or was it run by some individual and the club gave him the space? The Echo article mentions the chap who works in there, but it doesn't state whether he's an employee of SFC or if he was just given the space to work out of.

Being as Sierra Leone didn't qualify; no.

Lallana and Puncheon need to come out; there's no room for luxury fancy dans against a combative opposition such as West Ham. Get Danny Butterfield in at RM and Luke Shaw LM, and then I think you've got the makings of a solid setup. That'll shut up shop properly, in fact we'd be completely impregnable.

I've sat in the Chapel for years and never noticed the shop was there.

Christ alive, imagine that!! It would make the Arsenal thrashing look like a mere warm-up.

Well they do. They get bigger gates than us, they're based in the capital, and they're potentially on the verge of an almost free move to a state of the art 60K stadium.

The notion of Cortese thumbing through here for advice on how to run the club is quite humorous. Good one Wes.

It's a 4-3-3 formation and therefore arguably devoid of natural "wingers". Puncheon isn't a true winger, neither is Lallana. Playing a 4-3-3 (or 4-5-1, whatever its being labelled as) Mayuka is not going to play up front on his own. Therefore, to accommodate him, he'll either have to play on the right side or we adopt a 4-4-2 and he occupies the old Billy Sharp role.

Yep, those 14,500 home fans were really something to behold. Absolutely massive support base.

And one of those was Lee Sharpe, signed on YTS forms from Torquay for £200K, a record fee for a YTS apprentice at the time.

I'm afraid it was. Plus all the other factors previously mentioned (great academy, huge attractive club to start with, brilliant manager etc) but the signings made simply can't be put down as just "experienced" players as you previously did. United underpinned their success by making record transfers. It perhaps started even earlier than you suggest; buying Bryan Robson for a British club record (a record which stood for 6 years). They then toppled that in the late 80s with a club record re-signing of Mark Hughes. A British record £2M fee was agreed for Paul Gascoigne before he went to Spurs at the last minute. Gary Pallister joined in 89/90 for a fee which was a tiny shade below the british record at the time (2.3M, record was 2.5M). Roy Keane was a British record signing in 93/94; Andy Cole a British record in 94/95. And United really put their mark on the European stage with their Champions League win in 99, which was underpinned by the signings of Jaap Stam (most expensive defender in history at the time) and Dwight Yorke who cost even more. Within the next 3 years United broke the British record transfer 3 more time with tne signings of van Nistelrooy, Veron and Ferdinand, and that what was what really pushed them on to the European elite, and "where they are now" as you suggested. So yes, United have always been reliant on big spending; it has only been one facet of why they have been successful, but it is a valid one nonetheless.

It is specific to this club. They set an aspirational figure of 50% of players to come from the academy; which other clubs have previously done that? It is a sensible target but its a also a set, fixed target which can be compared against.

rallyboy

You can get a ticket in the Mike Channon suite.

At least Marians gave us a few good seasons before getting perma-crocked. Lee has been injured ever since he rocked up with us.

Agreed. United are where they are for a number of reasons. They have always been a massively popular club, even in their wilderness years. They arrived at a brilliant manager in Fergie and stuck with him. They had an utterly incredible crop of players come through all at once, just at the right time for United to cash in on the new riches offered by the Premier League. But they have also been able to consistently hoover up the best talent to supplement all that. Nearly £30M a piece for Ferdinand and Rooney; add in Berbatov, Veron, Anderson, RVN, RVP, de Gea, Carrick, Nani and Owen Hargreaves and you're at almost £250M in transfers just for those. Which doesn't take into account the players, as you say like Roy Keane, Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke etc etc who were less money back then but still considerably huge. Man United have had great success based upon resources from a number of areas. Suggesting huge transfer fees isn't one of those is plain wrong.

I genuinely don't think we could. When players are that promising and the big boys start sniffing around there simply isn't a lot we can do to keep them away. Even if we're a top 10 side or above. We may get lucky where a Lallana-type player comes through and is very comfortable at the club. Saying that, he hasn't really been put to the test with a big-money offer from a top club, so we don't know for sure. You say we could keep players at the club until 21/22, if we were a regular top 10 side. That would mean keeping hold of Walcott and Bale for up to an additional 5 years, and Ox up to an extra 4 years. Unrealistic IMO, if the big clubs come calling. For losing players to sides like Everton, Villa, Newcastle, Sunderland i.e. the types of clubs who we have lost players to before, then yes I'd say there's much more of a case to be made that we could keep our own. But when the top 5 or 6 clubs come calling then its nigh on impossible to keep your stars, and all we can hope for is to extract the best price

As I say its very tough to categorise. I listed Jason Dodd in my opening post, but he didn't arrive here until he was what, 18 or 19? Yet he's often considered as one of our own (perhaps due to long service rather than coming through the system). On the flip side I'd agree with not calling those particular 3 academy graduates, purely down to the time they came in to the club. Again, to flip that, Theo came in very early but we paid a fee for him, so is he a true academy grad? Its a massively gray area, and there's no right or wrong answer, just diferent measures of interpretation. One thing is for sure; the club will have to get more ruthless to exploit the leg up we've got in attracting young kids, especially those from other lower league clubs. The regs have been relaxed and this could be a good avenue for the club to bolster the academy ranks with quality (even if the morality of the new rules and compensation system still don't sit very well with me).

Is that your benchmark? I can't say it would necessarily be mine. Tough to categorise though.

I don't think it does. At any point in time a club's squad is going to lean to some degree on its own academy products. Right now though, as genuine first team players we've probably got the lowest ratio of academy players per full squad players I think we've had in a bit of time, so that clearly has to improve. But I believe it can, and staying in the PL is paramount to that. Saying that, if we produce another Bale, Theo or Ox, they'll still get attratced away to the bigger sides. We may get one extra season out of them but we'll never buck the trend of losing the best graduates to the elite of the PL; so it's a very tough ask, no doubt, but by no means a hugely unrealistic one IMO.

Plenty of block 2 aren't listed on the online booking stadium map so perhaps not a surprise.

Why not? In the side that beat Liverpool 4-1 is the late 80s we had Dodd, Benali, Rod Wallace, Le Tissier and Shearer. That side finished 7th in the league that year. It is a lot more difficult these days though; so the 50% non-academy graduates will need to be very good to supplement the youth. No reason why we shouldn't aim for it an ambition though, as its clearly not a ground breaking idea.