Players that United may have signed but didn’t

Rockets Redglare said:
Great shout, from what I recall he decided to stay at West Ham as he felt he owed them for revitalising his career.
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Wasn't it a case of Yorke refusing to leave, and United had to sell/get rid of Yorkie's wages before signing Di Canio?
 
Was Neuer ever close to coming here? I remember he had a monster game with Schalke against us and Fergie wanted to sign him. But I think he preferred to stay in Germany instead?
 
Cech

Lahm Terry Maldini Lizarazu

Robben Zidane Gascoigne Ronaldinho

Batistuta Shearer

Subs:
Bale
Kompany
Adams
Kroos
Modric
Hazard
Lewandowski
 
SATA said:
Was Neuer ever close to coming here? I remember he had a monster game with Schalke against us and Fergie wanted to sign him. But I think he preferred to stay in Germany instead?
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SAF wanted to sign Neuer at first, but Eric Steele preferred de Gea over Neuer and SAF trusted him, that's why he changed his mind.
 
stefan92 said:
SAF wanted to sign Neuer at first, but Eric Steele preferred de Gea over Neuer and SAF trusted him, that's why he changed his mind.
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SAF wanted to sign Neuer after the CL semi-final but he'd already agreed to go to Bayern. They made moves to convince him but he didn't want to. SAF even went over to him right after the semi final. The stuff about being convinced by Steele is omitting a LOT to save face at best.
 
Remember Marcos Senna being heavily linked with us, also Sergio Ramos a few years ago.
 
yumtum said:
Remember Marcos Senna being heavily linked with us, also Sergio Ramos a few years ago.
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I never understood where that one went away. We were linked with him a lot in the summer of 2006, along with Hargreaves, and ended up signing niether that year (Hargreaves joined a year later).
 
pacifictheme said:
We tried to sign del piero when juventus got relegated, but he was flattered and was tempted to work with sir alex but wanted to remain there.

Think he's spoken about it since retiring.

Gutting as I absolutely loved him.
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Del Piero confirmed that we tried for him twice. Once in the 90s and then again, as you say, after Juve were relegated. Like you, I loved Del Piero as a player so it would've been awesome seeing him here. Kudos to the loyalty, though!
 
The 3 that annoyed me the most that gets worse in hindsight were Ronaldinho, Hazard and Kroos.

2 that annoyed me at the time, but may or may not have worked well here, were Robben and Thiago
 
Riquelme claimed he had said yes to United but changed his mind
 
Antoine Griezmann. In the end I was convinced he'd not be that good for us anyway.
 
Amir said:
I think Fergie wanted Darren Anderton in the summer of 95' after Kanchelskis left. Spurs said no.
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I remember us being heavily linked with George Donis the following summer but he went to Blackburn, then we signed Poborsky a few weeks later.

Didn't really miss out on much, but this was nice:
 
Kroos, Modric, Tiago Alcantara and Kevin Strootman.

I'll say it 1000 times, those signings were no brainers at the time.
 
Xavi Hernandez, safe to say the world of football would’ve looked completely different for the next decade and a half if that transfer materialized, no tiki taka, no “greatest club team of all time”, no world cup for Spain.

https://talksport.com/football/1331961/xavi-man-united-barcelona-alex-ferguson-europa-league/amp/

Patrick Kluivert in 1998, I remember those rumors well, as far as I recall SAF wanted both Yorke and Kluivert, which would’ve probably meant that Cole was going to leave.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sport/football/144616.stm

Rivaldo his relationship with LvG went sour, iirc he wanted to play as a number 10 and Van Gaal wanted him on the left.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sport/football/579454.stm

Ballack ended up choosing Chelsea because he thought they had more chance winning the CL, joke’s on you pal.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2005/aug/02/newsstory.sport5
 
golden_blunder said:
Did you know that the plan was to sign Neville southall and only when that didn’t work out, we went and signed Peter Schmeichel
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Ahh the days of refreshing Ceefax and Alas Big Nev never came. If I am not mistaken we was also linked to the Russian National GK at the same period
 
r3idy said:
Ahh the days of refreshing Ceefax and Alas Big Nev never came. If I am not mistaken we was also linked to the Russian National GK at the same period
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Aha yes! Can’t remember his name now but glad we got PS in the end
 
Denilson back in the 90s was linked to a load of top clubs, he thought he was going to Barcelona but he ended up going to Betis for 20m and never really did much at club level at all, but played in 2 world cups and got a winners medal in 2002.
 
Adem Ljajic. We even got Zoran Tosic in to keep him company. Then we didn't sign Ljajic and quickly got rid of Tosic. Not a bad decision in hindsight.
 
Peter Beardsley. We actually had him on trial and he played for us in a League Cup game back in the early 80s. We chose not to sign him on.
 
Ronaldo (brazilian) apparently couldn’t get a work permit he then went to PSV.

Kluivert board rejected due to wages / transfer fee, worked out for the best as we signed York.

Aguero = board didn’t want to pay the total package for the deal.
 
My team of nearly signings

GK: Buffon. SAF wanted to sign him from Parma

RB: Zanetti
LB: Maldini
CB: Campbell
CB: Desailly

RW: Robben
DM: Deschamps
MC: Zidane
LW: Ronaldinho

STK: Shearer
STK: Batistuta
 
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