Two Manchester United transfer choices revealed by merciless Nottingham Forest after baffling £90m decisions

By Damerex -
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Manchester United’s decision to sell Anthony Elanga for £15m while rating Alejandro Garnacho at £70m illustrates the kind of errors that define their transfer missteps.  Manchester United are terrible at signings. That is no surprise. Their terrible history of post-Ferguson acquisitions is painfully familiar. However, they are arguably inferior in every facet of player sales, and insufficient emphasis is placed on how that disastrous failure has been more persistently harmful than subpar recruitment to their prospects for a significant rebuild.  They have never earned over £100m in a single season from player sales (four Premier League teams achieved this in just one season). They are the sole Premier League club whose highest sale happened prior to 2011. They still consider David Beckham's transfer to Real Madrid in 2003 as their fourth-biggest sale ever, and two players ahead of him – Angel Di Maria and Romelu Lukaku – were sold at a loss compared to their initial signing fe...
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Hansi Flick selects his preferred contender for the Champions League title.

By Damerex -

The team that Barcelona coach Hansi Flick believes has a good chance of winning the Champions League this year is not his own.

Matchday seven of the league phase of Europe's top club competition has begun this week, and with just one round of games remaining, teams are vying for spots to finish as high as possible.

After losing to Monaco in their first game, Barcelona bounced back to win five straight games against Young Boys, Bayern Munich, Red Star Belgrade, Brest, and Borussia Dortmund to move up to second place behind leaders Liverpool. 

The Premier League team has won six straight games, making them the only team with a perfect record, and Flick acknowledged that Arne Slot's team is the team to beat.

Barca take on Benfica in Lisbon on Tuesday evening, with coach Bruno Lage identifying the Catalans as the top contenders to win the trophy in May. Flick rejected that forecast, noting the challenge of accomplishing it entirely and mentioning Liverpool instead. 

"In the future, we will find out if [Lage] is correct." It's among the toughest contests to secure victory in. "Liverpool is among my favorites," Flick told the press. 

"It's one of the hardest things in the world to win the Champions League. We're doing well, but some excellent teams are also doing well.

"We compete in three different events. We're not performing well if you look at the La Liga results, but we're performing admirably if you look at the [Getafe] game [on Saturday]. Playing against Getafe is tough.

Barcelona's performance at home has been very different from their performance in Europe. After leading with just three points from their first 12 La Liga games, Flick's team has only managed one more victory in their last eight league games, dropping them seven points behind Real Madrid's lead. 

However, they did win the Supercopa de Espana earlier this month, defeating Madrid in the Saudi Arabian final for the second time this season with four goals in the first half alone.



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