The Red Revival: The Devil is in the Detail

 
 

Manchester United have today announced their appointment of Rene Meulensteen as the new manager at Old Trafford. 

 
 

Fifty-five year-old Meulensteen brings a wealth of footballing experience to the job and will take charge of first team affairs with immediate effect. He replaces previous manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer who failed to qualify for the Champions League finishing in 6th place in the Premier League.  

In a brief statement, Meulensteen said; ‘Ole’s a good guy, he had a tough job replacing Jose. His impact on arrival showed me that there are a core group of players willing to put a shift in for the shirt and those that aren’t WILL be moved on. I’ve spoken with Mr Woodward about our strategy moving forward which will include a Director of Football and we will be working hard over the summer to build a squad in line with our ambition’.  

 

 

This series of posts is set at the end of the 2018/19 season using a custom start date and updated transfers as of July 7th 2019. In this series of posts we will be looking at how to utilise the transfer market when buying and selling players, the use of a Director of Football and how we plan for a project. 

The first day in the job sees an approach for former Porto & Paris Saint Germain Director of Football, Antero Henrique. There were two candidates I was interested in bringing to the club, Antero Henrique & Mattias Sammer, I chose the former due to his adaptability attribute as I want him to integrate into the club as quickly as possible as we’ve got a lot of work to do. 

The Manchester United squad does not need much introduction each position filled with an international player, international players that have been stealing a living. It doesn’t take long to filter out a shortlist of names that I want out of the club and I will work with Henrique to find new employment at the earliest opportunity. 

 

Goalkeepers

 
 

Defenders

 
 

Defensive Midfielders

 
 

Midfielders

 
 

Attacking Midfielders

 
 

Forwards

 

As Henrique has only just joined the club, I have initially set the asking price for the selected players and have asked Micky Phelan to put the feelers out. 

When you return for #2 we will look to see how well Micky got on, whatever is left will be handed to our Director of Football to dispose of and we will start looking at the next generation of Manchester United. 

 

 

I would love for this save to be interactive with our community so if there’s any subjects you want us to cover please ask in the comments or on Twitter and the same goes for realistic transfer targets, we could sign De Ligt, Milinkovic-Savic etc and make it the same as every other save, or we can look at making players fit the philosophy; fast, attacking football with a strong British core. There have been lots of ‘Saving United’ posts, videos & streams and this will no doubt end in a similar fashion, with us being victorious but I hope with your help we really look at creating a realistic future for the red side of Manchester.