hatterson
Registered User
It's still money not well spent. Again, long term is exactly what Kanté is. Amavi as well. I wrote it here last summer. I also wrote that Schneiderlin was highly overrated on these boards (depsite my current reputation among some that I always overrated french players).
Scouts just didn't do their job, and the coaching staff neither.
I'm not saying Kante wouldn't have been a good target, I'm saying that the reason they didn't acquire him had nothing to do with spending too much money on Martial. They already had acquired Schneiderlin and Schweinsteiger who they believed would fill that type of role better, in addition to having Carrick still around.
Amavi wouldn't have had a spot with Darmian and Shaw occupying the sides either.
Again, I'm not saying Kante or Amavi wouldn't have been upgrades on what Utd are *currently* rolling out there. But the reason there's holes right now isn't because they ran out of money from paying too much for Martial, it's because the scouting and management didn't do a good job and they've had several injuries.
Saying it was a mistake to overpay for Martial because of the glaring holes in the first team is ignoring why those holes exist. Based on what the team thought *at the time* they were rolling out a solid lineup that was missing elite talent. They saw the chance to add potentially elite talent and took it.
It's easy to look back and say that in hindsight they should have targeted given players but at the time it wasn't like they were passing up on talent to pursue Martial. If anything, Martial was the last minute option after getting shut out on other targets, his price didn't affect them buying anyone else. So whether he's actually worth 70M or not is irrelevant. He's doing the job they bought him for and it didn't prevent them going after other players.