Puzzling transfer dealings we have made in the past decade

TsuWave

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I think it’s fair to say we’ve had quite a few missteps in the transfer market in the last decade - but there are two, maybe three, I just can’t understand:

- signing Matic over Fabinho
- signing Sanchez over Mahrez

I guess the other one would be the 80 million of the queen’s finest that we paid for Maguire, but those two make me feel sick.

Fabinho had been quoted in interviews stating he wanted to come - he’s quality was a known quantity - yes he hadn’t played in the prem previously but his ability was easily verifiable - the guy was a sought out player for a reason. In contrast, Matic was on a downward slide. I’ve just read a MEN article that says Mourinho wanted Dier or Matic ahead of Fabinho. God.

Similar situation with Mahrez - we‘ve been lacking a RW for eons, Mahrez was core to Leicester title win - great dribbling and creative ability, fast - I think he was 26 or 27 at the time, about to enter his prime - meanwhile Sanchez was like two years older and again, on a downward trend. He also operated more as a second striker - at times striker - or on the left - not on the right, from what I recall. I know it was a swap deal with Mkhitaryan going the other way, but still

to make matters worse, Fabinho and Mahrez ended up going to direct rivals - who are now the best teams in the country and arguably Europe - and have been performing for years. Sickening stuff.

which deals have we made - post Ferguson - that you can’t quite comprehend or at the very least make you sick - colloquialism - when you think about what is/what could have been?

for clarification - I’m approaching it from a “at the time” point of view, and although most stances will be partially informed by hindsight - I’m mostly interested on what people thought back then when these dealings were happening/about to happen
 
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None will ever be more nonsensical than Van De Beek. Big money on a player who plays in the same position as (at the time) comfortably our best player who happens to never be injured. All while we had a gaping hole 20 yards down the pitch.
 
Tarrou said:
None of the LVG transfers seemed to make any sense whatsoever
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Di Maria was a fine purchase - but he never got in with him and I'm not sure he actually wanted to be here.

We mishandled him badly though.

Martial was another good purchase at the time, he had a great year with him.
 
I still wonder what the hell was going on during Summer 2013, why we waited until the last minute to buy Fellaini when he was cheaper earlier in the window, why we thought Baines was good enough to step up to United, what that ‘urgent transfer business’ Woodward left the Australia Tour was, why Moyes took a fecking month off before doing anything, why he vetoed Thiago Alcantara allegedly, him seemingly on a wild goose chase for Fabregas etc.

Also the Winter 2014 window where we bought Mata, despite already having a considerable number of players who played in his best position. That seems like a what the feck moment in hindsight. Panic buy?
 
TsuWave said:
I think it’s fair to say we’ve had quite a few missteps in the transfer market in the last decade - but there are two, maybe three, I just can’t understand:

- signing Matic over Fabinho
- signing Sanchez over Mahrez

I guess the other one would be the 80 million of the queen’s finest that we paid for Maguire, but those two make me feel sick.
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Yep. You can look through the list of failings and see exactly what the team could have been.

Add Memphis Depay instead of Mane too.

Lindelof over Van Dijk.
 
Adam-Utd said:
Di Maria was a fine purchase - but he never got in with him and I'm not sure he actually wanted to be here.
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Before he joined, everybody knew that he wanted to go to PSG, but we signed him anyway.
 
Adam-Utd said:
Di Maria was a fine purchase - but he never got in with him and I'm not sure he actually wanted to be here.

We mishandled him badly though.

Martial was another good purchase at the time, he had a great year with him.
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I don’t think either of them made much sense

ADM didn’t want to be here, and we started playing him in a different position to the one he had excelled in for Madrid

we signed Martial at the last minute for a huge sum of money

the first year did go well in fairness but at the time it was a massive punt when we badly needed a first team player not a prospect
 
Tarrou said:
I don’t think either of them made much sense

ADM didn’t want to be here, and we started playing him in a different position to the one he had excelled in for Madrid

we signed Martial at the last minute for a huge sum of money

the first year did go well in fairness but at the time it was a massive punt when we badly needed a first team player not a prospect
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He did well, until we signed Zlatan and we found out how flaky the lad is. He seems to get upset over everything.
 
There's more wrong than individual players. If Man City had signed Sanchez instead of Mahrez and Liverpool Matic over Fabinho then both those players would have done better than with us as City and Liverpool are functioning teams with great managers. Similarly Mahrez and Fabinho would probably have underwhelmed here.
 
Everything thats been done in the last 9 years has been puzzling to be fair.
 
DomesticTadpole said:
Weren't they put off by his passing stats, then by January desperation had set in.
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We had about 6 solid months of Lingard and Pereira rotating in that number 10 spot. I think they managed about 2 goals and 1 assist between them in about 30 games. We were starvin
 
DWelbz19 said:
We had about 6 solid months of Lingard and Pereira rotating in that number 10 spot. I think they managed about 2 goals and 1 assist between them in about 30 games. We were starvin
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Aye, Pogba was injured at the start of the season and we attempted to fill the hole with Lingard/Pereira and Mata. It was a hideous failure.
 
dcrompton said:
There's more wrong than individual players. If Man City had signed Sanchez instead of Mahrez and Liverpool Matic over Fabinho then both those players would have done better than with us as City and Liverpool are functioning teams with great managers. Similarly Mahrez and Fabinho would probably have underwhelmed here.
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This is true, but I’m approaching it from a “at the time” point of view, and although my stance is partially informed by hindsight - even at the time I thought it was crazy to go for Matic over Fabinho.
 
We could barely have made worse transfer decisons over the last 9 years for what we have to show for it.

I don't think Matic over Fabinho is one of the worst compared to others but there were so many 'obvious' signings even to a non expert like me that it's baffling that they were overlooked.

Mahrez
Mane
Bernardo
Thiago (twice)
Kroos
Gundogan

- Rojo over Van Dijk (we had the Dutch manager in charge!)
- Lindelof over Van Dijk (also the same summer we could have had Maguire for £12m)
- Dalot over Pereira, a far better Porto right back
- Darmian when Valencia was clearly better, after letting Rafael go for next to nothing
- Selling Zaha for a few million and then complaining we had no pace or dribblers
- Letting Evans go for next to nothing

I could go on.
 
They probably wouldn't have done well for us either.

If Sancho had gone to City or Pool I think he'd have done much better this season. I'm sure we'd be crying look what we could've had if Sancho went elsewhere likewise Mane and many more. We make many bad signings but also can't utilize good players properly.
 
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Hindsight aside, it's not as if Mahrez would have been competing with Alexis anyway. Not even attempting to sign the league's best RW to fill the gaping hole on the RW... puzzling non-transfer.
 
Whats funny is most of you thinking some of these names would have signed for us in the 1st place.

I mean Mahrez signing for us instead of Man City and Pep it would just be for one thing and that would have been money and we all now how that turns out in the end.

Our transfer dealings have been rubbish because we lack creativity in the scouting and football departments, our transfer policy last year was pure football manager/fifa stuff and when you look at who we get linked with and who a large portion of the fanbase want us to sign it remains the same, we need Diaz or a Jota type signings not a big name because they are flavour of the month
 
When Fergie retired and Moyes came in, that summer I was terrified of the times ahead. But no one could have foreseen the shite times we'd be going through in the times ahead. That title winning team, lets face it; it was Fergie that got 120% out of that average team (in comparison to the fantastic teams we've had in the past) and won us that title. To get a new manager in and then to feck up that summer window and only get in Fellaini at the last minute was excruciating to watch. Moyes was never United standard but he wasn't given a fair crack at the job in terms of getting in the signings he wanted that summer. So many quality players we have missed out on over the years truly is astounding. Anyone could see that Van Dijk was a monster of a centre back (even when he was at Celtic) and Mane was United quality all over. If we had a half decent scouting department we'd be more clued on. And then that title winning Leicester team had some brilliant players (shows what good scouting can do). Kante and Mahrez had world class written all over them. What hurts even more is that I don't even remember us even trying to get them. A global power like United should have the best in class in every department. It aches to see how other teams scout and recruit and how structured they are. Get in proper coaches, scouts and people who actually know what they are doing. What is Fletcher doing, what is his job exactly and what qualifications does he have to have such a crucial role? We need to be more ruthless and not just hand out jobs to ex players and nice guys.
 
Raw said:
Waiting until January to buy Bruno was puzzling.
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I believe it was widely reported we had scouted Bruno but found him to be lacking in certain areas, like constantly giving the ball away and such, which is why we didn't sign him that summer. But panicked in January.

Other than that...

Harry Maguire - Ruben Dias was widely available at this point, City signed him a year later for cheaper than we signed Maguire and now he's a mainstay in City's defense...
DVB - For us I can't really see him playing in anything but Bruno's position, in ETH's system I think he can fit multiple midfield roles because they often move around and switch, but in our primative system that wasn't the case, so what was the point in buying him, which we compounded by never ever playing him...
Jadon Sancho - Don't get me wrong i'm not unhappy we bought him, but we clearly needed a Right Winger, which I suppose is what he was supposed to be but he's clearly better on the left so we've still got a gaping hole on the right side of attack...
AWB - You scout hundreds of RB's or whatever it was and AWB down the road is the best you could come up with? For 50million? Heads needed to roll after this, especially considering the fullbacks that have signed for other clubs since...
Alexis Sanchez - Come on...

I actually think the 14/15 and 15/16 summer signings were good and had better planning behind some of them than most other summers, just a shame none of them worked out..

Martial, Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger, Depay and Darmian I think everyone was ecstatic over at the time
 
Gavinb33 said:
Whats funny is most of you thinking some of these names would have signed for us in the 1st place.

I mean Mahrez signing for us instead of Man City and Pep it would just be for one thing and that would have been money and we all now how that turns out in the end.

Our transfer dealings have been rubbish because we lack creativity in the scouting and football departments, our transfer policy last year was pure football manager/fifa stuff and when you look at who we get linked with and who a large portion of the fanbase want us to sign it remains the same, we need Diaz or a Jota type signings not a big name because they are flavour of the month
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This post makes no sense. The players mentioned here were not moving from clubs of similar stature to United. Some of them have easily verifiable quotes saying they wanted to come or dreamed of United.

I know United is a joke club now and a shit team - but it is still one of the biggest football institutions and United’s appeal isn’t limited to just “money”.
 
Someone brought his name in another thread so I got reminded of him, obertan.

What was Fergie thinking.
 
Easy to say in hindsight but actually City only signed Mahrez because Sanchez chose us (Pep wanted him) and I don't remember many at the time regretting the decision - in fact everyone thought it was an incredible transfer coop
 
Fabinho, I remember the interview, he was begging us to sign him.

I posted this in another thread:

How did we lose out on both Van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate?? We have more money, but obviously no sense. Konate was 21 and a strong presence even when we played Leipzig, £36m is peanuts compared to the 50m and 80m on AWB and Maguire.
 
Rood said:
Easy to say in hindsight but actually City only signed Mahrez because Sanchez chose us (Pep wanted him) and I don't remember many at the time regretting the decision - in fact everyone thought it was an incredible transfer coop
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The cracks were obviously starting to show themselves so there definitely was concern, arsenal fans sure thought his game had dropped a level or two.
But I guess we just thought a change of scenery would help him rejuvenate.
Oh how wrong we had been.
 
Rather than trying to name all the bad transfers, it's easier to look at the 13 years since we sold Ronaldo and ask how many great transfers we have made?

De Gea, Van Persie and Bruno maybe? Everything else has ranged between middling and muck despite spending close to 1.4b on transfers in that time.
 
TsuWave said:
This post makes no sense. The players mentioned here were not moving from clubs of similar stature to United. Some of them have easily verifiable quotes saying they wanted to come or dreamed of United.

I know United is a joke club now and a shit team - but it is still one of the biggest football institutions and United’s appeal isn’t limited to just “money”.
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In many cases we signed the flashier player. Sanchez and Matic had way bigger profiles than Mahrez and Fabinho regardless of how the transfers turned out. Its not about whether United can attract the best players, its about whether we had/have the right people deciding who those players should be.
 
diarm said:
Rather than trying to name all the bad transfers, it's easier to look at the 13 years since we sold Ronaldo and ask how many great transfers we have made?

De Gea, Van Persie and Bruno maybe? Everything else has ranged between middling and muck despite spending close to 1.4b on transfers in that time.
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In terms of great signings, that's probably it. Though some decent ones I can remember were Chicharito, Zlatan, Romero, Blind and Smalling (say what you want about him, but for £10m he maintained a starting place at CB and had some good seasons). Always seems like the expensive ones turn out shite.
 
MadDogg said:
Fabinho is always going to be a painful one. He made it quite obvious that he was a Utd fan and wanted to come here, only for us to just ignore him. 12 months later he joined Liverpool and we all know how things have gone since.
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If Fabinho joined Utd, he would have been a flop. If Depay had joined Liverpool he would have been a hit.
What I’m trying to say is, no individual player was going to fix this mad house. The root of the problem was always going to prevail over any players!
 
Having scouted 100 fullbacks, AWB was our chosen one. I mean... Really?
 
Passing on Fabinho was so dumb considering we needed both a DM and had no RB cover and needed to replace Valencia anyway. Fabinho literally played both. Fabinho literally also was managed by Mourinho in the past at Real Madrid. So it seemed a no brainer.
 
L1nk said:
I believe it was widely reported we had scouted Bruno but found him to be lacking in certain areas, like constantly giving the ball away and such, which is why we didn't sign him that summer. But panicked in January.

Other than that...

Harry Maguire - Ruben Dias was widely available at this point, City signed him a year later for cheaper than we signed Maguire and now he's a mainstay in City's defense...
DVB - For us I can't really see him playing in anything but Bruno's position, in ETH's system I think he can fit multiple midfield roles because they often move around and switch, but in our primative system that wasn't the case, so what was the point in buying him, which we compounded by never ever playing him...
Jadon Sancho - Don't get me wrong i'm not unhappy we bought him, but we clearly needed a Right Winger, which I suppose is what he was supposed to be but he's clearly better on the left so we've still got a gaping hole on the right side of attack...
AWB - You scout hundreds of RB's or whatever it was and AWB down the road is the best you could come up with? For 50million? Heads needed to roll after this, especially considering the fullbacks that have signed for other clubs since...
Alexis Sanchez - Come on...

I actually think the 14/15 and 15/16 summer signings were good and had better planning behind some of them than most other summers, just a shame none of them worked out..

Martial, Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger, Depay and Darmian I think everyone was ecstatic over at the time
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Sancho is somebody who can be excellent on the right and he made sense in a lot of ways. Needs a system like all players to get the best out of him. The reason it's panned out as it has is because Rashford turned absolute garbage this season, which means LW was a gaping hole all of a sudden. Which was fine too, as Sancho can be the creator opposite to Rashford if he's on the right, or opposite to Greenwood if he's on the left. Then Greenwood had to go and be a scumbag and be cancelled as a footballer, so we are left with Sancho as our only winger who sometimes performs and the next best is .. Elanga? So might as well put Sancho where he can be more of an individual, as either way we aren't getting anything from the opposite flank to him.
 
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