Obviously another youngster who the boss rates. It is quite clear we are on a different strategy now to the big spenders - get them in young, develop them into United players.

Personally I prefer this strategy to buying big name stars - look at international teams - full of stars but never play as a team. I still think ourselves and our Catalan friends will be at the top of the tree come May.

i just had this feeling fergie was going to go for youth instead of established names. with the exception of Owen ofcourse, but then again we not paying anything for him so its worth the risk.

hopefully Fergie can unearth a flair central attacking midfielder while he is at it. i hear there is a unproven kid at Arsenal going for 40 million named Cesc Fabregas :-) :-) :-)

I don't get it. Yet another winger? I am a little confused. IMHO we need 2 midfielders.

Are we not addressing our weaknesses in centre midfield or are we only after wingers? Hargreaves may not comeback or breakdown again so who will cover for him? Also Owen is a gamble. It could come off but we need a proven striker without injury problems.Fergie and Gill have been away while big players have changed clubs while we've done nothing. Get a grip of the situation.

Looking to replace Scholesy £40 million for Fabregas and job done!

Central midfield need a serious look please SAF.

fergie must be thinking of offloading nani and tosic to be interested in another winger.
we need sneijder in from real and possibly aguero if the price is not too steep.
By and large a midfielder is all we need , hargreaves cannot be relied upon to last a season

Nani, Valencia, Park, Tosic and now this lad, seems like we're going to have 5 average - good wingers instead of 2 world class one's and 2 back up one/top quality young one's. If be brings in this lad i think it either means Nani's time at OT is up or SAF has changed his mind on Tosic since signing him.

Still, 7 weeks or so until the start of the season, lets hope SAF has a goalscoring midfielder, a defensive midfielder and another striker up his sleeve, instead of leaving our major transfer deadlings until transfer deadline day which seems to have become the norm lately.

Can't wait till the start of the season, 19th premiership title and another year for the bitters without a trophy. Gonna be so much sweeter seeing them fail when they have all these new signings.

Great snapping up young talents - this is the strategy Wenger was a master of earlier. But we need an established CM and talking about Wenger... What about going for Fabregas? £40 mills could secure him. If Fabregas (who seems to be very Ronaldo-ish in his 'I one day wan't to play for Barcelona'), whattabout Gerrard - how much will it take to make Liverpool thing 'this is an offer to good to refuse? Lampard? Or, to a musch lesser amount of money I'd guess; Joe Cole?

Don't know more about him than the article says, but the clubs monitoring him and the MVP sound like decent approvals :-) And Bordeaux is led by Laurent Blanc, so I guess Fergie has good knowledge about him.

We still need a couple of established players, one to strengthen the midfield and a striker who's ready to at least be third choice after Rooney and Berbatov. Costa still sounds like a good long term investment, so if we can get him plus at least two more, the summer will turn out ok :-)

I really don't get why people turn on Gill and SAF. We were never gonna get Kaka, and they weren't too late for Benzema, he just got swayed by Zidane. It's still the first week of July, and we've got Valencia and Owen, so let the market calm down and find some top class players who are good value for money.

7501 , Manchester 6/07/2009 at 10:10 -

Only one club in the whole of Europe has been involved at the receiving end of transfers over £20m , i.e. close to world class players. Barcelona, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Liverpool, AC Milan, Bayern, Juventus, Lyon, Arsenal , and United, are not particularly fussed about the urgency of signing new players one week into the transfer window. Do you think about your comments before you write them?

7501 , Manchester 6/07/2009 at 10:10 I don't think Owen is the gamble you & others believe.....Newcastle were their own worse enemies rushing him back when he wasn't fully fit, its known if you do that there a risk of picking up other niggles......we won't fall into that trap and lets not forget prior to Newcastle his record was very very good.

Talking about talents: Swedish striker Marcus Berg (playing i dutch eresvidise) was brilliant during the U21-tournament and it's just a question about wich prem-club that snaps him up first. Everon, Villa and Spurs is all said to be interested.
Looking at our own squad; anybody knowing what will happen with Manucho?

I like this strategy, get them playing the United way. As for OH we obviously don't know the current state of play although his surgeon is confident of a 100% recovery. What I am sure of is if SAF thinks there is going to be the slightest problem he'll do something about it.

Central Midfielders - we have Anderson, Carrick, Fletcher, Hargreaves? and Scholes and Gibson to back them up. I think he has faith in these guys despite what happended in Rome and what many of us may feel. I think this is the season to start demanding from Anderson,son,son and hopefully he cn show his obvious talent more often.

We're not hearing anything about any of these guys leaving so I can't see anyone else coming in????

This kid looks to have huge potential, from the games I've seen. Pacy and tricky, has played either wing and up front.

Yes, it seems we need 3 or 4 wingers to make up for the one we've lost....but look at is positively - wingers are often the most dangerous players in a team, and United have relied on them to stretch and open up teams since the 50s. I am very proud of this fact - name another team who even plays with traditional wingers any more? They are seen as a luxury in the modern game, but Fergie sees it differently and I agree. Some of the most devastating players in our history played wide - you know the names - and you can never have enough good wingers in my eyes! (We should buy Ashley Young I reckon!)

Don't worry - we still have all the Ronnie cash, and it will be invested. Maybe not this summer, but better to spend wisely than impatiently.

From clips this lad looks to have ability and tricks similar to Ronaldo when he arrived. He will need to muscle up and learn to make it at United though.

As others have said I cant really understand signing another young winger but he appears to be left footed and I am very unsure on Tosic but we also have Ljajic coming in January who is supposed to be the real deal but is also currently playing in a wide posistion. Maybe SAF has ideas for him centrally ??

As others have said I would love us to address the problems in the center of midfeild. We are weak in that area qaulity wise and for me that posistion is still the most important area of the pitch. Midfeilds dominate games and dictate games and at present none of our CM's are world class. Anderson has the potential to be imo. Fletcher has become very usefull at what he does. Does SAF think Ljajic is the answer to the creative side of things ? Hargreaves will never be the same player and may lose most of his pace through his injuries.

If we could find one truely world class midfeilder for some of the 80 million we got for Ronaldo I would be very happy indeed.

The other question is goals.

If we go to 4-4-2 next season and you expect Rooney and Berbatov to get 20 goals each in all comps (There is no suggestion either is capable of many more) Owen also will get 15-20 given enough minutes. You then have 55-60 goals in all comps. Where's the other 40+ coming from ?? Midfeild should weigh in with 20-30 as it has done in previous years. Thats 10 for Valencia,Carrick,Anderson. 6 for Fletcher and 4 between the rest ?? Does anyone beleive this will happen ?? Not a chance.

Goals throughout the team ?? Well a trickle maybe but we dont have a winger capable of 25-40 this season to cover for the rest of the midfeild.

Yes I expect Owen Rooney and Berbs to score more than the forwards managed last year but there will still be a hole where Ronaldo was particularly when he was trying and scored 42.

Hmmm, I remember a certain Bellion trumpted as the next great player to come out of France.

He is a raw, but decent player on the wing, however I believe he could be moulded into a top quality striker.

He has a mix of style between a young Henry and Van Persie.

The latest is we are looking at Yaya Toure, but SAF keeps looking for wingers. Does it have something to do with the delayed payment for Nani and Anderson?
I am sorry but would be bitterly disappointed if the two above are not given permanent starting eleven berths. Selling Nani would comr back to haunt us.
Toure would be a brilliant signing, but our clubs miserliness could cost us. Cesc has a 40mil asking price, if we get him we could take a quantum leap. Wenger of course must have another frenchman in view. I would also like to SAF make an offer for Clichy, that boy is brilliant.

Lee , Heywood, Heywood 6/07/2009 at 10:40-

While your analysis on scoringfigures is statistically correct, it's possible to get sidetracked from the key issue, which is point scoring, not goal scoring. As long as we have a strong defence and a possession-hogging midfield, then we do not need to score 100 leagues every season. Last season we scored 9 less than Liverpool and yet ended up with four points more than them. While we will miss Ronaldo's contribution, last season this was only 18 in the league, a figure I feel the team is capable of replacing. In addition, I'm sure Fergie believes the likes of Rafael, Valencia, Fabio, Gibson, Welbeck, Hargreaves, Owen and Macheda are all capable of chipping in on a regular basis to further compensate the deficit. So yes, we will miss Ronaldo's goals, but we will figure out how to cope with it.

Central Midfielders - we have Anderson, Carrick, Fletcher, Hargreaves? and Scholes and Gibson to back them up. Sorry but neither are world class now that scholes is in his twilight years, hargreaves wont be available till january anyway so will miss half the season till he breaks down again, scholes is past it against the top teams ditto giggs in midfield,carrick will never dictate a game and goes hiding,fletcher is a good workhouse and anderson never last 90 mins,neither will score more than 4 goals a season either, please can we get a proper defensive midfielder and a couple of creative goal scoring ones also, see we are linked to yaya toure today

Him and Valencia down the wings would be quite good. Am a bit Jealous..

CTID

7501, Manchester

For a start, both Fergie and Gill deserve a holiday. Fergie, in particular is tied to the club for 9/10 months of the playing season, then there’s at least a month preparation for the forthcoming season (would you rather he didn’t bother with this, or go mid-season?). So he has one month a year to take his holiday, which he’s taken and is now back to work. Give the guy a break.

Also, I might add that he’s most probably voluntarily spent a lot of his free time on holiday keeping in touch with club officials.

Big transfers are mainly tied up well in advance of the signing. Of course there’s a few last-minute decisions, but Berbatov was always coming here last summer, as was Valencia this; he has said as much publically. Ronaldo was always going to Real, as was Kaka. It doesn’t matter where Fergie or Gill are – the majority of the decisions will have been taken months ago.

You say that big players are changing clubs. Which ones? Only Real have bought anyone of note this season. The only other big-name trasfer would be our capture of Owen.

Kaka wouldn’t have come here, Benzema didn’t want to come here, so why are you so worried about any of Real’s signings? It wouldn’t have mattered if Fergie and Gill were on the moon or sleeping on said players doorsteps – we wouldn’t have signed them.

There’s a whole summer to go and believe me, Real’s four signings are just the start of the summer merry go round. I think the only people that should get a grip are those fans that moan at every opportunity.

As usual, United will go about their business in the right way, no doubt signing a mixture of experience and youth. I for one am pleased that they never panic and take this sensible approach. If you want to see established ‘stars’ being signed on exorbitant wages, go and support City (if you don’t already).

Am I mistaken but didn't we win League, World Club Cup, League Cup and beaten finalist in CL this year! Most of the comments seem to suggest we don't win things and we need massive investment to compete with the big boys. We are the big boy, we're the benchmark for every club in the PL and probably CL. Our so called average players won 4 trophys last season and that was a season where they did not play at their best after the season before where they won the league & champions league. Give the guys a break, it's not like they don't win anything for you.