Manchester United: To Twenty and More!

The Start of the Journey

As a life-long Manchester United fan, I am going to take on the role of the manager of the mighty Red Devils, and aim to make a new 1999 squad and try for the treble, and to become the greatest team ever. High hopes, I know.

I am also using a LFCMarshall update, so I will have players such as Buttner, Van Persie and Kagawa in my team already. However, I don't think it is the final update, so it may be missing a few transfers, but nothing major.

Starting Club Ideas

This season I have been given £33.5 million to spend on transfers, and I plan to spend most of it. I am aiming this year to win the league, and reach the last 16 of all cups played in. I will also gradually bring in younger players to develop the team, but I won't bring any in until January, when I will look at their stats and form, as well as potential.

After looking at the starting team currently available, I am quite happy with the first 11. There are still a few players/positions I am looking to improve on though.

RB: Rafael is good, but I don't believe he is good enough for a starting place every week. I will try to look for someone to contest with him for the preferred right back position.

CB: With Ferdinand getting on a bit now, Smalling and Jones are around to help out, but I feel they need more time and experience to become a first team member, so I want to find someone who can cover Ferdinand for a while.

CM: Kagawa will take one spot, but I feel I will need another CM. Ferdinand and Carrick just don't do it for me, so they will be sold. I will still have Cleverley and Anderson to back up, with a lot of younger players with good potential.

SUB GK: Lindegaard just isn't good enough in my opinion, so I will certainly look for a replacement in case of any injuries picked up by De Gea.

Player Movement

The first thing I did as manager was change the situation of some of the players, moving them up from the U18 squad, to the reserves and then to the seniors. The following changes have taken place:

U18 to Senior
- Nick Powell

U18 to Reserves
- Angelo Henriquez
- Jack Barmby
- Adnan Januzaj
- Mats Daehli

Reserves to Senior
- Danny Welbeck
- Anderson
- Federico Macheda
- Bebe
- Fabio Da Silva

I may move some more players in January, mainly the younger players in the team, but none are being moved for now besides the ones listed above.

Pre-Season Friendlies: The Teams

I decided to cancel a few of the friendlies I was due to play for two reasons.
- I felt the squad wouldn't benefit from playing the clubs
- I wanted to play others teams I prefer.

I cancelled friendlies against Sparta Prague, Recreativo, Real Sociedad and Girona, keeping friendlies against Antwerp, FC Porto and Borussia Dortmund.

I then proposed two away fixtures against Walton and Hersham and Molesey FC. I did this because they are my local teams, and I will use them to try out younger, less experienced players. Both teams accepted, so the following fixtures for pre-season are:

16.07 - FC Porto - Home
19.07 - Antwerp - Away
21.07 - Borussia Dortmund - Home
30.07 - Walton and Hersham - Away
04.08 - Molesey FC - Away