UNITED KINGDOM, January 3 – Manchester United don’t have a proper plan for the transfer window and would be making another panic buy in signing Sadio Mane, according to the Daily Telegraph’s Matt Law.
United spent big money on Memphis Depay, Matteo Darmian, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Morgan Schneiderlin and Anthony Martial over the summer but are currently outside of the top four in the Premier League after only nine wins from 20 games.
Louis van Gaal is expected to spend again this month, with Southampton’s Sadio Mane and Lazio’s Felipe Anderson both linked, but Law is uncertain whether either player is what United need.
“We get to January and they suddenly need a striker,” Law told the Sunday Supplement on Sky Sports. “But how many goals has Mane scored this season? Three [in the league].
“You wouldn’t look at him and say traditionally he’s a United player based on that record. The policy has just become a bit of a disaster. It’s panic, panic, panic.
“Every transfer window we come to, there doesn’t seem to be any proper plan. It’s ‘oh, we’ll try and sign Neymar, we’ll try and sign Gareth Bale’ and actually they end up with [Morgan] Schneiderlin and [Bastian] Schweinsteiger.
“It’s just a disaster, and you can see it coming with this transfer window again. Who knows what Anderson will be like when he comes over to England? It’s just all over the place.”
Man Utd ‘searching for an identity’
The Mail on Sunday’s Rob Draper, meanwhile, is unsure whether simply spending more money will resolve United’s problems. “There’s something much deeper wrong at United,” said Draper. “It’s structurally wrong that the coach and buying policy don’t appear to be integrated together.
“The coach and the club don’t seem to quite know how to get out of the post-Ferguson era.
“To me it looks like a club searching for an identity and trying to navigate its way out of this iconic manager they had.
“On the one hand, they do [need to sign players] because they’re not achieving. But on the other, they’ve spent an awful lot of money since Van Gaal has been there. It’s not like he’s been starved of money.
“You might go back and say, ‘why did he let Van Persie go, why did he let Chicharito go?’ Van Persie was in the autumn of his career, clearly Chicharito is embarrassing him now.
“I’m sure they will try and get Mane and add to that forward line, they will probably add a midfielder. But he’s had the pick of his buys so it can’t just be the solution.”
By Teamtalk.com