"real deal" is the term you are looking for

jones > rojo?

Swap Memphis and Mata and I think you're probably pretty close there kevin.

Rojo just joined the team today. LvG will want him to have a few weeks training under his belt before starting him.

Not gonna lie I totally forgot about Herrera, if we sign 2 more players (defender and striker) our squad could be ridiculous.

Our Bench v Spurs could be:

GK
Rojo
Di Maria
Blind
Schweinsteiger
Hererra
Fellaini

---

Januzaj
Wilson
Hernandez
Darmian
Rafael
Evans
Pereira
New signings?

Ideally I wouldn't play Can as CB but the next best we have is Sakho who is a liability who doesn't seem to be able to get any weight on his passes. Can at the back is a safe pair of feet and he can handle big strikers who are a threat in the air just as well as Sakho too. We're not Barca I know but they play Mascherano as CB and everyone laughed at first, but him and Pique is one of the best pairings in the world.

That line up was only my “If everyone is fit XI" by the way not how I think we will play. I doubt we will see Sturridge and Benteke together very much.

Getting a bit worried about us not signing a CB tbh. Just don't see who is out there that would be available. Otamendi seems like the only realistic target mentioned, but he's had one elite season at 27 and is ridiculously expensive. If we were going to pay his clause, we probably would have done it by now to get him in for preseason.

Utd squad is looking pretty great atm. Especially from an attacking standapoint. Still some defensive concerns though obv.

Im not as worried about our defence as other people are. The cover we have in front of them is the most important thing for me and we are pretty strong in that dept right now.

No excuse not to be competing for the title for Man Utd

Don't think you will find anyone disagreeing with that.

It does seem a bit far fetched, it has the feeling that he's ahead of Moreno though. Not sure you want to be handing the kid his debut at Stoke though.

I don't see Pool having a first XI, it'll change every game. Brendan will want Ibe and Lallana involved a lot.

Just making sure expectations are high so that the lols will be amplified

So we are in the same boat as City?

United squad looks really unbalanced to me

lol kev

Are you being serious? We don't have a back four. We only have 1 first team centre forward whose fit at the moment.

Our back four is lol bad, the team will continue to ship goals left right and centre like last year. It's going to be really unbalanced again.

There is a reason we're 6.5 to win the league.

Holy **** at the goal Mexes just scored against Inter.

Last shout does anyone want to bet against me on arsenal winning Emirates cup?

Kingweed,

We have spent obscene amounts of money over the past few years. If we aren't challenging for the league then there is something wrong. Everyone questioning our defence is fair enough but I think we will surprise quite a few. On the striker front we are going to sign someone so I wouldn't worry about that.

Our defence isn't as bad as is made out, once we ditched the 3 at the back we looked solid. Only conceded 1 more than Arsenal and 1 less than City, take away the 5 goals vs Leicester in one game and our record is excellent.

Blind has shown he's a good option at LB and Valencia/Darmian is fine for RB. We'll almost certainly sign an experienced CB before the window closes too.

Trouble is that you haven't improved on the back 4 yet (darmian an unknown in pl) and ddg totally godmoded last year

We have spent obscene amounts of money over the last 2 years, mainly to catch up with Chelsea, City and Arsenal squads. We've also had to over pay somewhat for the players. It doesn't take long to get to massive amounts when you spend £60m on a single player and around £30 or over on others in areas that have needed strengthen for ages.

And we're going to have to spend more money to get a more balanced side. Signing a quality CF isn't going to be cheap in this market!

And neither is a good experienced CB that will be required.

So we're certainly looking at signing another 2 players at £30m+ in order to have a good all round balanced squad which will actually be able to compete with Chelsea/City and to a lesser extent Arsenal for the title.

At the moment with the current squads - bare in mind Chelsea haven't signed anyone yet - they've got a replacement sub goal keeper and Falcao whose a gamble. City have signed Sterling who IMO isn't going to massively improve them and Arsenal have got Cech and haven't even started signing players - we're still dogs against them all and our new signings are going to have to gel together as well.

Regarding the goals we shipped last year, that's a bit of a sham to compare it to Arsenal and City when you look at it on the whole in that we looked like we'd concede 2 or 3 every game and the much higher number of goal scoring opportunities we gave away. Add the countless world class saves that DDG kept out with stopped double figures of goals - which Arsenal and City didn't have.

Guess i'm not as optimistic as you two are.

Man U have no chance of challenging for the title. And if De Gea and Di Maria do both leave then it could be a disastrous season for them.

What striker are they going to get who will make up for the defence? Liverpool already snapped up Benteke.

Moreno is pretty bad defensively. Like someone else said realistically I doubt we throw Gomez into the fire at Stoke to open the season, but I think he'll emerge as the better choice here.

Except Can was horrendous in this position the second half of last season. Sakho and Toure are much better choices here (yes, Toure). Plus I don't think we're molding Can into a CB for his career, but I also don't know where he'll get games. He'll have to compete with Lucas for that DM role against the big teams

Pretty awesome Valencia and Young are still getting games. How can Januzaj not get a game over Ashley Young?

Kw post very accurate. Key for united will be to start well, if they don't they'll find themselves too far behind to challenge as che/city/ars won't require as much gelling time to hit top gear. Also if they don't get a quality cf and some defenders they'll have to run super good with injuries and even then not sure that's be enough. They definitely do have dynamic mf talent and won't be ****ed when Carrick inevitably misses games like last year. Plops a pretty big question mark as well.

Still think soton may be an outside threat(top4) as they haven't lost too much outside of clyne and schneiderlin who they replaced with solid players. Will also have jayrod back to give pelle some backup or even start over him.

I expect pretty big things from mane and tadic this year