Older players who played for United that you wished we signed earlier

Dwight Corke said:
Basically every ageing stopgap striker we've signed in the last few years.

Radamel Falcao circa 2012
Di maria when SAF was still manager.
Wilf Zaha
Louis Saha
Owen Hargreaves
Schweini
Cantona
RVP
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I wonder what Fergie could have done with him.
 
Dwight Corke said:
Basically every ageing stopgap striker we've signed in the last few years.

Radamel Falcao circa 2012
Di maria when SAF was still manager.
Wilf Zaha
Louis Saha
Owen Hargreaves
Schweini
Cantona
RVP
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This.

A young Falcao with DiMaria on the wing would have been something else.
 
I personally wouldnt have wanted Casemiro earlier. He's here at the perfect time with the perfect manager. We'll get 3 or 4 years out of him.

Something about him showing up when we were on our arse and being apart of a proper rebuild instead of Jose and Ole's smoldering torches.
 
I would have loved if we could have had more years of RVP at his peak, but he hit his peak quite late in his career anyway and fell off pretty rapidly after that.
 
Id have loved Mata under ferguson for a few years
 
Cavani
RVP
Matic
Casemiro

Are the 4 that spring to mind. I actually preferred Cavani to Zlatan. I think he was just a better fit as a United striker and a real shame that certain issues reduced his playing time.

Matic was brilliant for us when at his best so would have solved a lot of our midfield issues if we had signed him earlier.

A more debatable one:

Ander Herrera. He was on the radar before SAF’s departure. If he had a season at the club under Ferguson then maybe we don’t go into the following season with the midfield issues that Moyes inherited. We probably don’t sign Fellaini and that whole transition period would have been a bit different. Having said that, that would only have prolonged Moyes’ stay at the club and he clearly was not the right man.
 
1. Robin van Persie
2. Henrik Larsson
3. Zlatan Ibrahimovic
4. Juventus Ronaldo
5. Radamel Falcao
6. Nemanja Matic
7. Edinson Cavani
8. Alexis Sanchez
9. Raphael Varane
10. Casemiro
 
All these names and no mention of Teddy Sheringham, don’t think he gets half the credit he deserves!

Shit he did get a mention, nevermind!
 
Zlatan and Casemiro. Obviously the likes of Larsen and van Der Sar would have been great a few years earlier but we were in a better place back then and didn't need them as much.
 
Casemiro and Ericsson are weird choices, since neither have hugely declined relative to their peak. Eriksson is a solid but unspectacular player, like he always has been He spent his career at Spurs and Inter but was never the stand-out player in either side. Good player, not amazing. Essentially the same as he is for Utd.

Casemiro has always been a top class (albeit slightly limited) defensive midfielder and is doing this same job for Man Utd. He has maybe dropped from a 8.5/10 player to a 8/10 player but he is still one of the best in the league/world. I think there is a slight overrating of his peak going on by Utd fans at the moment. Yes is he world class, but if you go back 5 years and ask Utd fans to chose a single Real Madrid midfielder to sign for Utd then everyone would pick Modric first, and would be 50/50 between Kroos and Casemiro. And no-one is pretending that Kroos is a generational talent.

Speaking of which, the obvious recent choice for "player who should have signed for Utd younger" is Schweinsteiger. He was actually a generational talent, at a time when Utd really needed a top class central midfielder. Certainly better than Kroos, obviously better than Casemiro. And dare I say it, maybe even better than Scholes? And yet his Utd career was a complete shit show, and the less said the better

The other clear choice is Henrik Larsson. Criminally underrated in England, and yet joint with Thierry Henry as the best striker to ever play in the UK. Much better than Alan Shearer (who is apparently "the best English striker of the modern era" despite playing in a piss poor league and not having a single medal in his cabinet), and both Chris Sutton and John Hartson have confirmed that he is the best striker they've played with (above Shearer and Bergkamp respectively). Which is obvious to anyone with eyes that watched them both. The choice between Larsson and Ibrahimovic is difficult I agree, but Larsson slightly edges it for me due to being more versatile (Ibrahimovic only works as a focal centre and cant seem to integrate his game around other great players which is why Guardiola ditched him and he won nothing outside of bullying Italian sides, but Larsson showed at Barcelona he can play as part of a functional team).
 
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gredanica said:
Casemiro and Ericsson are weird choices, since neither have hugely declined relative to their peak. Eriksson is a solid but unspectacular player, like he always has been He spent his career at Spurs and Inter but was never the stand-out player in either side. Good player, not amazing. Essentially the same as he is for Utd.

Casemiro has always been a top class (albeit slightly limited) defensive midfielder and is doing this same job for Man Utd. He has maybe dropped from a 8.5/10 player to a 8/10 player but he is still one of the best in the league/world. I think there is a slight overrating of his peak going on by Utd fans at the moment. Yes is he world class, but if you go back 5 years and ask Utd fans to chose a single Real Madrid midfielder to sign for Utd then everyone would pick Modric first, and would be 50/50 between Kroos and Casemiro. And no-one is pretending that Kroos is a generational talent.

Speaking of which, the obvious recent choice for "player who should have signed for Utd younger" is Schweinsteiger. He was actually a generational talent, at a time when Utd really needed a top class central midfielder. Certainly better than Kroos, obviously better than Casemiro. And dare I say it, maybe even better than Scholes? And yet his Utd career was a complete shit show, and the less said the better

The other clear choice is Henrik Larsson. Criminally underrated in England, and yet joint with Thierry Henry as the best striker to ever play in the UK. Much better than Alan Shearer (who is apparently "the best English striker of the modern era" despite playing in a piss poor league and not having a single medal in his cabinet), and both Chris Sutton and John Hartson have confirmed that he is the best striker they've played with (above Shearer and Bergkamp respectively). Which is obvious to anyone with eyes that watched them both. The choice between Larsson and Ibrahimovic is difficult I agree, but Larsson slightly edges it for me due to being more versatile (Ibrahimovic only works as a focal centre and cant seem to integrate his game around other great players which is why Guardiola ditched him and he won nothing outside of bullying Italian sides, but Larsson showed at Barcelona he can play as part of a functional team).
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Schweinsteiger better then Kroos and Scholes.
Larsson superior to Shearer and Bergkamp.
Erm, ok.....
 
Schweinsteiger, Casemiro, Eriksen, Cavani, VDS.
 
harms said:
Considering the most realistic ones, van der Sar should be on top. It’s not like we’ve had a chance to sign Schweiny/Ibra/Cavani/Falcão earlier…
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I'm going to take a similar route and stick with more realistic options as well. I don't see the likes of Ibra, Schweinsteiger, Owen, etc. as being realistic options. Personally, I do wonder how good we'd have been had we got Laurent Blanc at his peak rather than in his older years. We probably didn't have much of a chance during the early 90s, but I wonder how we'd have fared had we gone in for him instead of Prunier. I also wonder the same about peak Sheringham especially since Sir Alex liked having 3-4 quality forwards in his lineup.
 
Cavani - I feel he embodies a United player with his style of play. Getting him at his peak would have been unreal.
Zlatan - Could have rivalled Cantona with his legacy here if we signed him years prior.
 
Cavani before he went to PSG in 2013. They got him for like €50m which was an absolute steal if you ask me. I remember reading when Moyes took over he was keen to bring him to United and thought he'd score goals for fun. Not sure how true this story was but we should've gotten him at the time.
 
Raimond van der Gouw might've been useful in the late 80s. We signed Jim Leighton the season he moved to Vitesse. Perhaps van der Gouw could have had a stint as number 1 until Schmeichel arrived.

Leighton got a lot of stick for his performance in the 1990 FA Cup final before being replaced by Les Sealey, and ultimately didn't work out. I was only young, fancied myself as a goalie, and actually liked Leighton at the time until then.

As a backup Van der Gouw was always solid and he could have been first choice at other teams or at a different time I felt. Whether he'd have had the maturity when he was younger we'll never know, but it could have been interesting if we signed him instead of Leighton back then.

Just throwing a different name out there as a lot of obvious ones have already been mentioned.
 
Chipper said:
Raimond van der Gouw might've been useful in the late 80s. We signed Jim Leighton the season he moved to Vitesse. Perhaps van der Gouw could have had a stint as number 1 until Schmeichel arrived.

Leighton got a lot of stick for his performance in the 1990 FA Cup final before being replaced by Les Sealey, and ultimately didn't work out. I was only young, fancied myself as a goalie, and actually liked Leighton at the time until then.

As a backup Van der Gouw was always solid and he could have been first choice at other teams or at a different time I felt. Whether he'd have had the maturity when he was younger we'll never know, but it could have been interesting if we signed him instead of Leighton back then.

Just throwing a different name out there as a lot of obvious ones have already been mentioned.
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Van der Gouw is a terrific shout. He was such a dependable keeper for United that I wonder if he'd have made a great #1 for us back then.
 
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