![]() United knew all about Alvarez too, but did not make a move in the January 2022 window because Ralf Rangnick was in interim charge and the club were waiting on a permanent manager to provide the impetus. Now, aged 23, he is a World Cup winner and has settled well in the Premier League. He was already a full Argentina international when he moved to England. Never mind Erling Haaland, who United were told about when he was a teenager at Molde in his Norwegian homeland, Julian Alvarez is an excellent example of City’s forward planning and conviction.Īlvarez scored 20 goals in 35 games in Argentina’s top flight in the 2021 season, having made his debut in 2018 and been a member of the River Plate squad that won the Copa Libertadores that year. Such ruthless, refined decision-making can be seen in a tight squad packed with established talent. He brought his contacts book and football brain to the Etihad in 2012, laying the foundations for a reunion with former Camp Nou colleague Guardiola, and continues to execute the transfers, both in and out, that lubricate the City winning machine. His repeated insistence on recognising the work of Begiristain, City’s director of football, felt telling.īegiristain played 313 games for Barcelona and won 22 Spain caps in a long playing career, before working as director of football at the Catalan giants between 20. Ten Hag replied: “Yes but I think still, don’t underestimate the role of Begiristain.” There was an interjection: “That club is built for Pep Guardiola.” “About City, (Txiki) Begiristain does a very…” “I don’t know if that is true,” Ten Hag said. It was put to him that the most important person at a club should be the manager, just like Sir Alex Ferguson before him at United and Pep Guardiola now at neighbours Manchester City. Wiping away the debt would allow for more flexibility but the way for United to really raise additional money is via player sales, and that perhaps was at the crux of how Ten Hag answered a question about what is happening across town. This would be the case even under Qatari owners. Club staff have been told it is business as usual, but the prospect of a new direction suddenly coming in means there is a hesitancy to go full throttle.Īs it stands, United are looking at a budget of about £100million ($125.6m), due to financial fair play rules. Whether Ten Hag was keeping his cards close to his chest for negotiation purposes or whether he genuinely is in the dark about how much he will be given to spend, the truth is there is much uncertainty around United because of the sales process. Everyone knows high-level players cost a lot of money.” But in football you need funds to construct squads because, at the end of the day, the level of your players decides if you are successful or not. The club has to compete for the highest in the world - Champions League, Premier League. “The only thing I know is that Man United is one of the biggest clubs in the world from a fanbase perspective. “No, I don’t have influence on that… also I don’t know,” Ten Hag said, when asked whether he had received assurances he would have funds to shape the squad to his desires, whoever owns the club by then. But we want to knock them all out, and there is some way to go.”Īdding muscle and honing guile will help United land the power punches on those Tuesday and Wednesday nights next autumn, but how much can Ten Hag do when the market opens, and what is dictated by the takeover process? This was a topic the United manager seemed unable to provide total clarity on. “We have already shown the improvement that we can beat the best teams in the world. In your windows, you strengthen your squad, or make investments so you get more balance. “But of course I, we, see this as a project. If you've been using KAYAK successfully up until now, try closing your browser and starting again.“Yeah, I think so,” he said, in a manner more confident than it looks written down. Please send us a message and we'll try to figure out what went wrong. Probably something about the web browser you are using made KAYAK think you are a bot. They tend to try to cram large suitcases in the overhead bin, and they prattle on about celebrities they know while you are trying to watch the movie. For example, we don't want bots running about trying to book airline tickets. Bots are generally a good thing, but some web pages are for humans only. KAYAK uses bots to search for travel deals. Search engines like Google use robots to build up search results. What is a bot?Ī bot, or robot, or crawler is software that visits web sites and collects data from them without a human present. If you are seeing this page, it means that KAYAK thinks you are a "bot," and the page you were trying to get to is only useful for humans.
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