Is there a need to spend massive transfer fees?

Tyrion said:
We should be much more reluctant. Most >100m transfers don't even work out.

Griezeman and Dembele to Barca failed
Neymar and Mbappe to PSG didn't give them the CL
Countinho did nothing at Barca except score for Bayern
Lukaku to Chelsea has failed
Joao Felix to Atletico failed
Pogba to United failed
Ronaldo to Juve failed
Hazard to Real failed

Most of the others happened in the last 2 years so we can't really judge them but the record of the top 20 transfers or so are mostly failures or the jury's out.

Gareth Bale is the most expensive transfer I can see that isn't recent or a definite failure and look how badly that turned out. The top transfer that definitely succeeded was Ronaldo to Real 14 years ago.
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Neymar and Mpabbe were hardly "definite failures" either. It's a bit simplistic to argue that because PSG failed to win the CL, every signing they made is therefore a failure.
 
Think that because we are deemed a massive club the fee goes up anyway. Brighton might begin to find this out or that clubs they buy from will start asking for a big cut of any future sales.
 
Joosep_K said:
I don`t call that a failure by scoring 81 goals in 98 matches.
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To be fair I think no one expected Ronaldo would fade so fast, from a distance his personal production at Juve was still very good. Of course he was always going to be beat by Father Time... The fee (not the wages...) was reasonable. Massive mistake of a signing but for other reasons, obviously led by the marketing dept.
 
Korwas said:
No. Each season I wonder more and more if we shouldn't just sell every damn player and just fill the team with young talents. Like how much worse could it get? There just seem to be a bad attitude within the lockeroom or something. With young players there should atleast be some zip in their step and some energy. I would love to see Pellestri and Garnacho get a run of games and see what happens. Yeah they suck sometimes, but so do our expensive players. It's crazy to me that a team like Real Madrid has been developing their young guys like Vinicius, Valverde and Camavinga into stars while being one of the best teams in the world. We won't play our young guys because we are scared of losing our position as a non-challenging team.
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Yeah, throw together a bunch of young inexperienced players and run them through the confidence grinder of being responsible for results at the club with the most fans and the highest demands in the world. How could that not work.
 
The problem is less about budget per se and more about (a) how good our scouting system is (b) how good we have been at coaching players to improve and therefore (c) how likely we are to attract players keen to self improve rather than just after a big salary. And (d) we don't win stuff.

All this plays against us. ETH has the skills and reputation to turn it around but it will take time.
 
No.

Young good players have become more aware that they are better off spending a few years at a club that they will develop at by getting game time. Big clubs would rather let someone else do the hard work and then spunk the big fee on a relatively finished article, most of the time if it doesn't work, they will just get rid and do it again.

The days of big clubs and fans being patient with young players developing and working their way into the first team are gone. Take Mainoo as an example, he could be given 2 or 3 years of bit part appearances and starts against weaker teams to get to first team starter level. But that won't happen, because Utd aren't good enough around the pitch to accommodate a young player like that.

It's all about instant impact and instant success. Apparently the best way to do that is to spend 50m+ on every player.
 
Its the scouting that needs fixing and having a DOF or commitee analysing the type of football we are going to play, stick to it, sign managers that fit it and choose the players, along with the managers input what best suits the principle. Then buying £70-100+ mill players wouldnt be such a big problem. Sure there would be the occasional dud, but not as many as we have had.
 
TheRedDevil'sAdvocate said:
I disagree with the term acceptable. I couldn't give a rat's arse if Pogba is the amalgam of Deschamps, Tigana and Platini. When you spend £89.3 million on a player only to have discussions, from day one, what is his best position on the pitch, which players we should sign to "unlock" him and how to utilize him, you're doing something wrong. When you decide to spend so much cash on a single player, you have to know what you want to get from him and how he fits into your plans. You don't buy a Ferrari, if you don't have a driving licence.

Lukaku made little sense, too. I wouldn't put this entirely on the scouting department because the guy (or his agent) has convinced a number of clubs that he is the target man that can play alone up front. But you also have Martial and Rashford in the attack, who are miles away from the profile of the provider who will work their arses off to support the lone striker. Probably a case of indulging Mou's big-man forward fetish without reading between the lines that he was actively forcing Martial out of the club and trying to convert Rashford into a more traditional winger. Which, of course, the club would never be OK with (Martial was still considered a top talent and the club shivers at the mere thought of Rash feeling "unhappy"). At least we got some money from Lukaku.

Mkhitaryan at 40 million is OK, i guess. Just another case of buying a decent player and expecting of him, when things fall apart, to be Robson, Keane and Scholes, all wrapped up into one.
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Totally agree on Pogba. That money was spent with the understanding he would be the one who improved everyone else, not someone who needed everyone else to improve him. Of course with proper research I think they’d have seen he wasn’t that kind of player, and his time in a very experienced and able Juventus midfield didn’t provide evidence of it either.

Lukaku, Mourinho wanted to sign Perisic to provide the crosses. That strategy made sense, and Perisic is a grown-up, the kind of player Mourinho likes to work with. Signing Lukaku with no-one to serve him was bonkers. And of course his attitude stank.
 
I would argue that we're actually reducing our past habit of splurging out on players with massive transfer fees.

I'm procrastinating big time at work so I've looked at all our post-Fergie windows and how our incoming players' fees ranked within the top 5 highest fees of their respective windows. This feels more relevant than the actual hard cost, because many reactions on the forum seem to be dismissing the wider context of our rivals' spending.

2013/14: we had the 2nd & 5th most expensive transfers
2014/15: 1st & 5th
2015/16: 3rd
2016/17: 1st & 5th
2017/18: 1st
2018/19: none
2019/20: 1st & 4th
2020/21: none
2022/23: 2nd & 5th
2023/24: 5th (assuming we don't sign anyone more expensive than Højlund, and assuming rivals don't sign big either)

Looking at this way suggests that compared to our rivals' transfer activities, we're gradually becoming more prudent with our fees. The first five seasons post-Fergie indicate we were really being mugged off, while the second five may have seen our real spending go up, but as everyone else's also goes up spectacularly, we've been far less reckless and much more selective in deciding when to open the purse.

I'm obviously in favour of us spending more sensibly, but we ought to recognise that the Manchester United tax is gradually being mitigated by those negotiating the fees.
 
No there's not, but clubs will always demand a hefty fee for the "traditional big clubs" if they come knocking, even if the player was never priced that high. Tielemans and Trippier are the ones that come to mind instantly, but there's plenty of other examples.

We will always have to pay top money just because we're Man Utd and many players won't live up to the expectation of their transfer fee 1. because people and even fans will bring it up every single chance they get and 2. since the amounts are absolutely ludicrous but that is how fecked football is nowadays. Prices like Antony's and Hojlund's are/will be the new norm.
 
Silverman said:
We have been a disaster with how we've spent our transfer kitty since Ferguson left.
We'vs spent:
€105m on Pogba
€95m on Antony
€87m on Maguire
€85m on Sancho
€85m on Lukaku
€75m on Di Maria
€64m on Mount
€42m on Mkhitaryan
€39m on Van De Beek
€38m on Bailly

Is there really a need to spend massive fees on players. We could of had Caicedo for just over €5m two years ago.
Kobie Mainoo looks very promising for the DM position.
We've got Garnacho and Pellistri for €8.5m in total and they look far more promising than Antony and Sancho who we spent €180m on.
We sold Smalling for chips who would have been a better option for us than €87m Maguire.
Eriksen on a free is very good business.

I get spending big is required sometimes. We needed a top quality GK and I think Onana will be worth the money. Casemiro steadied the ship last season.

Surely signings like Amrabat for just over €30m are the type we need to pursuing more often. Would take the pressure off the players involved too.
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Big clubs do have a need to spend big on transfer fee every odd transfer season at least.

The reason being: big clubs are expected to fight for domestic/european silverware every single season.

They need to try to compete at the top level all the time - when their squad is on top of its cycle, when it misses some two or three essential pegs, when it is in rebuild.

This means every odd season, if not every single season, they need to slot in some top-level players in key positions, who are expected to perform from day one. And this means that there's a bias towards buying already established names who already have a CV, good experience, and clearly assessed talent.

And those are usually expensive.


Then, cash don't play, legs do, so you'd better be smart with who you buy, and be competent in assembling a good working backbone of a team to slot them in.


Team that do their job well (AND are reasonably lucky), they build a backbone squad with young-ish/not famous players that they nurture over the years, while adding two-three expensive superstars/hot-shots every season, and then proceed to win something, which makes it looks that their big money buys were worth the expense, and also makes people forget about the ones that were also paid big but didn't really work.

Teams that don't do their job that well (OR are unreasonably unlucky), their squad is ill-conceived or the coach is wrong and he's not backed enough or whatever else, they don't win shit, and it looks like that all those big transfer fees where drown in the toilet and weren't necessary at all.


But the reality is, winning by using well a big budget is hard; winning without using a big budget is waaaay harder.
So the money is needed.
It needs to be well spent too, but it's needed nonetheless.
 
abundance said:
Big clubs do have a need to spend big on transfer fee every odd transfer season at least.

The reason being: big clubs are expected to fight for domestic/european silverware every single season.

They need to try to compete at the top level all the time - when their squad is on top of its cycle, when it misses some two or three essential pegs, when it is in rebuild.

This means every odd season, if not every single season, they need to slot in some top-level players in key positions, who are expected to perform from day one. And this means that there's a bias towards buying already established names who already have a CV, good experience, and clearly assessed talent.

And those are usually expensive.


Then, cash don't play, legs do, so you'd better be smart with who you buy, and be competent in assembling a good working backbone of a team to slot them in.


Team that do their job well (AND are reasonably lucky), they build a backbone squad with young-ish/not famous players that they nurture over the years, while adding two-three expensive superstars/hot-shots every season, and then proceed to win something, which makes it looks that their big money buys were worth the expense, and also makes people forget about the ones that were also paid big but didn't really work.

Teams that don't do their job that well (OR are unreasonably unlucky), their squad is ill-conceived or the coach is wrong and he's not backed enough or whatever else, they don't win shit, and it looks like that all those big transfer fees where drown in the toilet and weren't necessary at all.


But the reality is, winning by using well a big budget is hard; winning without using a big budget is waaaay harder.
So the money is needed.
It needs to be well spent too, but it's needed nonetheless.
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Agree with this. If you can afford it, a more proven player at 50m is better than a less proven player at 10m. Also, if you're a lesser club, then you can often assume that the latter is good enough to play for you already, which means he's less of a risk and he strengthens your squad even if he doesn't continue to develop as hoped. If you're a top club, you probably can't assume that. This means he doesn't really get the playing time to develop, unless you loan him out. But if you do, then you've used those 10 million on something that doesn't strengthen your team in the short run.
 
No, it is my belief there is not a big difference in quality or talent between a lot of elite players, it is simply a mixture of confidence, tactics, familiarity with systems, coaching etc that allows most players to either shine or fail.

Then there is a selection of what I'd call super elite players that are truly difference makers that might only come around every 2-3 years - some of them may never even become available in the peak years like Messi - or you have to move mountains to get them like Haaland.

The fact that £100 million is going for water carriers - albeit very good ones - is a sign of the times in the PL and how it is caught in a bubble of overvaluing what's new and shiny. Chelsea under Boehly are the perfect example of this. Brighton had Bissouma, sold for big money, then Caicedo, sold for obscene money and yet they're still winning games. I don't doubt they are capable of getting another midfielder of Caicedo's quality again for not much money at all. Meanwhile they wouldn't give Billy Gilmour a chance because he wasn't the shiny new toy and he could end up having a better season than any of their midfielders within a far better structured system.
 
The key with transfer fees is not getting caught in the middle but having the firepower for when the real difference makers come around. Maguire is a good example: he's a player who, given his abilities and performances pre-United, could probably be found elsewhere in football for much cheaper than the price Leicester commanded. But instead of being clever and trusting a scouting network to find a similar player for half of the price, we stumped a record fee for a CB that already needed pieces around him to thrive. Get caught paying for enough of these fees and you won't be able to strike when a Bellingham, Haaland, Enzo type player comes around because you'll have blown your budget on decent players that you paid 40% premiums on for various reasons when those profiles could be found elsewhere for cheaper.

Brighton is obviously the prime example of finding the right profiles in obscure places. But funny enough Real Madrid is probably the poster boy for knowing when to show the blank check and when to be smart and acquire the younger talents for cheaper before they become superstars.
 
The players nowadays are overpriced hugely. The fees don't reflect thier ability. I also think there's a huge lack of quality world class players out there. Look at the number 9 position. All top teams are struggling. You look at the strikers and defenders in the 90s and 00s and its night and day.

All teams are overpaying right now.
 
Brighton and Newcastle are doing a better job than us at spending wisely.
Aston Villa seems to have a great summer window too.
 
Of course not but you need an incredible scouting setup like Brighton and Dortmund have.
 
The cost of all Man City players that have played in their first two games this season:

Ederson - €40.00m
Dias - €71.60m
Gvardiol - €90.00m
Akanji - €17.50m
Walker - €52.70m
Rodri - €70.00m
Kovacic - €29.10m
Grealish - €117.50m
Haaland - €60.00m
Alvarez - €21.40m
Ake - €45.30m
Laporte - €65.00m
De Bruyne - €76.00m
Silva - €50.00m

They also have Stones (€55.60m) and Cancelo (€65.00m) that haven't played yet. This also doesn't include all of the players they have signed and have already left. The list in the OP includes a bunch of players that have left already.

On average, we're spending more than them, but their squad is still extremely expensive. They're the bar and proving you have to spend. The only bargains they have really found are Akanji and Alvarez. Most clubs won't sell players on the cheap to us. Unless our negotiators are incompetent at their job, there seems to be a United premium. Our issue is buying the the wrong players. Even if they were all cheaper, they still wouldn't be good enough.
 
This might not be that relevant to the point of the thread but there's a massive correlation between spend on wages and success, less so spend on transfer fees and success. Generally if you want to predict which teams will do well in the future, their spend on wages is the most reliable metric.
 
Well if you do not spend, you get left behind..
While city were buying the agueros and the Silva's..we were buying Michael owen and obertans
They then got a coach like Pep and the rest is history...
Even now, Chelsea has more chances of being successful than us and Liverpool..
Real bought 400-500M of young talent and are set for the next 5-10 years in midfield and forward line if they add a 200M mbappe..
We spent 1B in useless players and we are not even sure to get top 4
 
reddevilz007 said:
Brighton and Newcastle are doing a better job than us at spending wisely.
Aston Villa seems to have a great summer window too.
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But what are their expectations? For Newcastle if they do not get top 4.. It's ok..
For Brighton, it is better if they do not get relegated..
 
sullydnl said:
This might not be that relevant to the point of the thread but there's a massive correlation between spend on wages and success, less so spend on transfer fees and success. Generally if you want to predict which teams will do well in the future, their spend on wages is the most reliable metric.
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But also generally a lot of the most successful teams also don't necessarily have some of the very, very best paid players because they can be players past their peak and have grown to that salary gradually, or players joining a club for money or players that damage a wage structure of a club. Better to have a team with lots of 200k a weeks rather than 400ks and 100ks.
 
I almost feel like the club prefers to pay these ballooned transfer fees to act like we still are relevant in the football world whilst in reality we aren't a top side anymore.
 
sdb4884 said:
I almost feel like the club prefers to pay these ballooned transfer fees to act like we still are relevant in the football world whilst in reality we aren't a top side anymore.
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Haven't been a top side for a decade. Cant do any smart signings. No scouting, no succession planning. All PR and clicks
 
The_Midfielder said:
But what are their expectations? For Newcastle if they do not get top 4.. It's ok..
For Brighton, it is better if they do not get relegated..
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Exactly. I don't get the Brighton comparisons at all. United are not Brighton. Yes, we waste a tonne of money on players we shouldn't. We still can't afford to gamble on punts and hope they come good. Imagine the fanbase if we're in midtable after buying a bunch of punts and they don't perform. People would be going mad. It was bad enough when we finished 6th.

United has a problem with signing players and keeping them around for years on end. We don't get rid after they fail for 2+ years. They stay here and get a contract extension or they leave on a free/basically nothing. A lot of the fanbase does not help by saying these same players should get more chances after continuously failing.
 
What's worse is there is no strategy from United for the past 10 years or even the past 5 years.

You need a clear strategy and strong and smart sporting director and a manager you trust.

Mistake in transfers happens all the time. Just because you buy someone for 100 million does not mean he will be better than someone signed for 25 million.

United need to trust Ten Hag and give him 3-4 years.
 
To be fair, at the times of the transfers Pogba and Di Maria were both world class, and those moves made sense. Nobody would've reasonably expected the players to underperform the way they did. When Madrid bought Hazard everyone thought they were getting a world beater, too.

The other ones, though...yeah, really bad business, although Lukaku had a pretty decent goal return.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
That’s really not how the world works.

Or, more specifically, it’s increasingly how the world works, which is why it’s going to shit so quickly.
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Or maybe I’ve been around here long enough to know where certain individuals stand on issues pertaining to the club.

My world is actually quite good. Stop judging people and come off your high horse, the world will be more pleasant.
 
KikiDaKats said:
Or maybe I’ve been around here long enough to know where certain individuals stand on issues pertaining to the club.

My world is actually quite good. Stop judging people and come off your high horse, the world will be more pleasant.
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It was a comment on people reacting and responding to headlines and not actual story.

Which why I found it funny that you said you didn’t read the opening post And instead just responded to the question in the title.

Glad your world is good though.
 
Top clubs spend big so, yes. Our problem has been spending big on the wrong players. Of course you can always find big transfers that didn't work out but that's not the issue. It's how often we overpay and how often we go for the wrong players for us.
 
I personally wouldn't mind a higher volume, lower cost approach. The theory used to be it wasn't really worth our time taking chances on young players from the Championship, South America/Eastern Europe etc...because we could just wait for other clubs to take all the risks and then cherry-pick the best talents from rival clubs.

The problem is, that's incredibly difficult to do now. As soon as a player has 10 decent games, they're worth £50m+.

As many have pointed out, big transfers have a relatively average success rate anyway. We could have signed the likes of Julian Alvarez, Erling Haaland, Moises Caicedo and Gabriel Martinelli for peanuts had we had more appetite to gamble. All four were identified by senior figures in the club before they got their move. Depressing we could have had all of those for half the price of a DvdB
 
CloneMC16 said:
The cost of all Man City players that have played in their first two games this season:

Ederson - €40.00m
Dias - €71.60m
Gvardiol - €90.00m
Akanji - €17.50m
Walker - €52.70m
Rodri - €70.00m
Kovacic - €29.10m
Grealish - €117.50m
Haaland - €60.00m
Alvarez - €21.40m
Ake - €45.30m
Laporte - €65.00m
De Bruyne - €76.00m
Silva - €50.00m

They also have Stones (€55.60m) and Cancelo (€65.00m) that haven't played yet. This also doesn't include all of the players they have signed and have already left. The list in the OP includes a bunch of players that have left already.

On average, we're spending more than them, but their squad is still extremely expensive. They're the bar and proving you have to spend. The only bargains they have really found are Akanji and Alvarez. Most clubs won't sell players on the cheap to us. Unless our negotiators are incompetent at their job, there seems to be a United premium. Our issue is buying the the wrong players. Even if they were all cheaper, they still wouldn't be good enough.
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Why in Euros? There is 1 expensive player in that team, maybe 2.
 
Rista said:
Top clubs spend big so, yes. Our problem has been spending big on the wrong players. Of course you can always find big transfers that didn't work out but that's not the issue. It's how often we overpay and how often we go for the wrong players for us.
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When they do spend big it almost never works out.
 
No, of course there’s a United tax but as a club we haven’t been proactive enough and it seems like our scouting system just doesn’t work well.

We desperately need reinforcements in midfield while at the same time one of the young Spanish stars, Veiga, is going to Napoli for peanuts (€30m?). There are so many talented French midfielders (Thuram, Caqueret, Koné), Camavinga went to Madrid for €35m. Meanwhile, we spent €70m on Case. I understand that sometimes it’s difficult to change player’s mind but let’s be real, we’re Manchester United and it’s on the club to make good transfers happen.
 
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Clear answer is no we don't need to spend the money we do. At times it is necessary to get the player but we have tunnel vision on so many players. Even this summer when the Mount deal started to reach £55m we should have walked away. He was never worth that with 1 year on his contract and money completely wasted. After two games he's already showing what a waste of money he was and will be another thrown to the pile of duds we have recently signed.
 
Joosep_K said:
I don`t call that a failure by scoring 81 goals in 98 matches.
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They regularly won Serie A by being smart with their transfers. They started to spend a lot more on players, starting with Ronaldo and that's exactly when the wheels started to come off. Ronaldo himself played well but I think they'd have been much better off if they never signed him and kept avoiding big transfer fees.

justsomebloke said:
Neymar and Mpabbe were hardly "definite failures" either. It's a bit simplistic to argue that because PSG failed to win the CL, every signing they made is therefore a failure.
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You're probably right. Realistically Qatar bought them and Messi to show off and build their brand so they were successful at that. That said, Neymar didn't bring them any closer to winning the champions league for most of his career there and adding the other two meant they had 3 players who didn't work.

I think in both cases you can say the individual players did well at the clubs who signed them but the team either wasn't improved or got worse. It seems much smarter to me to do what Brighton do, what Liverpool did or even what City do by signing 30-70 million players rather than anyone for over 100.
 
It's not a matter of spending big. You need to spend big. It's the matter of spending them on random players with no clue how to use them.

Pogba was a great player back in 2016 but he was a huge misfit at United and it was clear United had no clue what to do with him. This is applicable to most of our business. Now we spent 60m on Mount who isn't just an average player, but it's clear he has no role in current United set up.

Clubs identify their weaknesses then buy players with a profile that might fix it. United buy players firs then try to figure out how to integrate them into the team.

Total and complete lack of strategy in building the team is what ruined United as a football club, and we are showing no signs of improvement regarding this anytime soon going by the last 2 markets.
 
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