Why is our transfer approach so abject and shockingly poor?

JUPITER

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Our transfer strategy is utterly awful for an elite club and needs overhauling much more desperately than our first team does.

But how has it gotten like this? And who is behind it? Is it all Fergie's fault, or do the Glazers play a part in some of the shocking business we've been involved in the last decade?

While City have been signing Aguero, Silva and Toure, we were signing Owen, Kagawa and Fellaini...

But that's Fergie/Moyes' time period so lets look at this past summer in comparison to the other elite PL sides -

This summer Chelsea picked up Costa for 30m and Arsenal signed Sanchez for 30-35m, while we took up a loan deal with an unfit Falcao that's set us back 20m with an option to buy him for 40m. Costa has been a revelation for Chelsea, Sanchez has been incredible for Arsenal and Falcao has been utterly useless for us.

Both Sanchez and Costa would suit us more than Falcao, and are cheaper than him...so why are we being lured into poor deals like this? We could easily have out-priced Arsenal on Sanchez' fee and wages, and, due to FFP, probably could've done the same to Chelsea with Costa, but instead we're paying over the odds to loan injured players from Monaco...why?

Also this summer Chelsea picked up Fabregas for LESS than we paid to sign Ander Herrera in the same window...Fabregas is a player we're desperate for, and yet we're signing lesser midfielders for more money and then freezing them out of the team...what's going on here? How is this happening?

Even our signing of Shaw, a bright young left back with bags of potential starts to leave a sour taste when you consider that we paid £30m for him - it's an extortionate amount.

For years our signings have been consistently very poor, under 3 different managers. Average players signed for elite prices, and it isn't good enough.

Most clubs have a single owner who the buck stops with regarding transfer dealings, but for us it's a bit of a void. Is it Woodward? One of those Glazer brothers?

My question is this - who's fault is it and are they being taken to task over it? And further, how do we fix it as a club - director of football perhaps?
 
For last season I'd argue the lack of Champions League football made targets like Costa, Fabregas and Sanchez a lot harder to sign. Yes you can say we signed Di Maria, but no one but PSG were in for him and PSG apparently had FFP issues. Costa, Fabregas and Sanchez were wanted by teams with CL football which we didn't have, plus London is a bigger draw than Manchester.
 
Keeps It tidy said:
I personally do not care how much we pay as long as we are bringing in good players.
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Fair enough - how many truly brilliant outfield signings have we made in the last 10 years? And how many hundreds of millions have been spent in the last 10 years to achieve that?
 
Raw said:
For last season I'd argue the lack of Champions League football made targets like Costa, Fabregas and Sanchez a lot harder to sign. Yes you can say we signed Di Maria, but no one but PSG were in for him and PSG apparently had FFP issues. Costa, Fabregas and Sanchez were wanted by teams with CL football which we didn't have, plus London is a bigger draw than Manchester.
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City didn't have any problems making brilliant signings without CL football and they're in the same city as us.

It's not good enough.
 
JUPITER said:
Fair enough - how many truly brilliant outfield signings have we made in the last 10 years? And how many hundreds of millions have been spent in the last 10 years to achieve that?
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Over the last ten years we have won what 5 league titles and went to 3 CL finals. To do that we needed to make a few brilliant signings. Since Ferguson retired from day to day duties we have fallen off a bit but, it should not be forgotten how consistently great it was for the club.
 
Keeps It tidy said:
I personally do not care how much we pay as long as we are bringing in good players.
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I agree.

I look at the 6 players we signed and I'm happy that we signed all of them aside from the £6m loan punt who was one of the best players in the world just 12 months prior to that signing.

Di Maria - Madrid's second best player last season and UCL Final MOTM - £57m
Rojo - World Cup Finalist and arguably best defender in his league the year before - £16m
Blind - Dutch Footballer of the Year - £14m
Herrera - Questionable price but non-negotiable - £28m
Shaw - English tax, hugely talented, competing with Chelsea, 3 seasons under his belt before he is 20, will prove a bargain - £30m
Falcao - try before you buy on a player most people had in the tier below Messi and Ronaldo just a year before.


I really don't think its that bad.
 
First, transfers are a gamble, whoever is making them.

Second, every club has hits and misses and we aren't an exception.

Third, both Kagawa and Owen have PL winners medals.
 
Pexbo said:
I agree.

I look at the 6 players we signed and I'm happy that we signed all of them aside from the £6m loan punt who was one of the best players in the world just 12 months prior to that signing.

Di Maria - Madrid's second best player last season and UCL Final MOTM - £57m
Rojo - World Cup Finalist and arguably best defender in his league the year before - £16m
Blind - Dutch Footballer of the Year - £14m
Herrera - Questionable price but non-negotiable - £28m
Shaw - English tax, hugely talented, competing with Chelsea, 3 seasons under his belt before he is 20, will prove a bargain - £30m
Falcao - try before you buy on a player most people had in the tier below Messi and Ronaldo just a year before.


I really don't think its that bad.
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Of course it's not bad, but people love to complain about something all the time. Especially when the wins doesn't come easy at the moment.
 
JUPITER said:
City didn't have any problems making brilliant signings without CL football and they're in the same city as us.

It's not good enough.
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Scatter gun approach. They signed a huge amount of absolute dross for inflated prices, of course some were going to turn out alright.
 
The lack of Champions League football hindered us in the transfer window. Didn't really like the approach of announcing that we are going to spend a lot of money. In hindsight it seems silly and allows ther clubs to bump up the price because we seem desperate.

Chelsea have been the benchmark in the premier league for transfers recently. They manage to get huge fees for players they don't want. And have signed two world class players who have hit the ground running, Fabregas and Costa.

The OP was a bit harsh on the Falcao deal. It was a gamble if it had worked out it would have been amazing business. He just needs time. I'm confident it'll work out for him.
 
JUPITER said:
City didn't have any problems making brilliant signings without CL football and they're in the same city as us.

It's not good enough.
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I wasn't arguing against that, I agree that United have made some very poor signings but targets like Costa and Sanchez were simply unattainable due to lack of Champions League football. If City were in the position of having no CL football and having to fight against teams with CL football for a certain players signature, they wouldn't have been successful either.

City's one truly fantastic season of transfers without CL football (just Europa league) was in 2010/11 when they signed Yaya, Silva, Milner, Dzeko, Balotelli and Kolarov. None of them were really playing for top teams except for Yaya Toure and he was getting replaced at Barca anyway (similar to our signing of Di Maria actually). We should be signing players like these instead of aiming for unattainable players.
 
Hindsight as per usual. The Falcao deal seemed like a major coup for the club, the envy of Europe, Man United got fcuking Falcao on loan! Yet it didn't turn out great. It's impossible to argue when someone is using hindsight as a crutch.

Does anyone have a legitimate source for this £20m one year loan deal?
 
JUPITER said:
City didn't have any problems making brilliant signings without CL football and they're in the same city as us.

It's not good enough.
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Except they do, their business has hardly been great. Aguero, Yaya, Kompany, Zabaleta are about the only players you could argue have been completely unqualified successes and thats of a list of 50+ signings they have made post takeover. Their records been very poor given what they've spent.
 
Pexbo said:
I agree.

I look at the 6 players we signed and I'm happy that we signed all of them aside from the £6m loan punt who was one of the best players in the world just 12 months prior to that signing.

Di Maria - Madrid's second best player last season and UCL Final MOTM - £57m
Rojo - World Cup Finalist and arguably best defender in his league the year before - £16m
Blind - Dutch Footballer of the Year - £14m
Herrera - Questionable price but non-negotiable - £28m
Shaw - English tax, hugely talented, competing with Chelsea, 3 seasons under his belt before he is 20, will prove a bargain - £30m
Falcao - try before you buy on a player most people had in the tier below Messi and Ronaldo just a year before.


I really don't think its that bad.
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Spot on. It was a very good window apart from Falcao, who was a gamble worth taking. All this on top of the fact that we sacked a manager, and the new one was off at the WC. I'm happy that we had such a good window given the circumstances.
 
DatIrishFella said:
Hindsight as per usual. The Falcao deal seemed like a major coup for the club, the envy of Europe, Man United got fcuking Falcao on loan! Yet it didn't turn out great. It's impossible to argue when someone is using hindsight as a crutch.

Does anyone have a legitimate source for this £20m one year loan deal?
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It's £20m including wages. So £6m for signing him and £14m on wages. Apparently.
 
Players recruitment is a low percentage business anyway. If you look around in Europe this year. Only Sanchez, Fabregas, Costa and maybe Kroos can be considered unquestionable successes. That is a very low percentage considering how the number of transfers. There is also the issue that it is difficult to tell how good our signings actually are because we have such a dysfunctional team. To most people, Di Maria was at least as good as Sanchez in the summer and I don't buy that Sanchez just improved and Di Maria regressed. Rojo, Blind and Shaw are not bad signings by any means. They did not set the world alight but neither did Fernando, Fernandinho, Filipe Luis, Danny Welbeck of anybody at Liverpool.
 
I think Ed Woodward should be relieved from the transfer dealing, his like a mumpet with a fat cheque! We need someone who understands football as Ed is a rugby man so I read. Someone who can negotiate deals using there head!
 
Shockingly poor? Go back to September 1st and show us where you said that then.

The signings haven't all worked out so far but hindsight is a wonderful thing and the season isn't over yet
 
Our transfer hit/miss record over the last 5 years is absolutely shocking, I'm surprised that so many of you think of it as satisfactory - it really isn't for a club of our resources.
 
I think one of the problems with some who judge our transfer approach is that they pay immense attention to every Manchester United transfer rumour but very little to other clubs. So they see City or Chelsea sign a player and think, wow look how direct they are in their business. But in the meantime they attach significance to every player we are rumoured to be after and think wow it takes us forever and we keep losing targets.

Truth is, if you pay attention you see all the other clubs rumoured to be after all sorts of players they never in reality come close to signing.

We have room for improvement still, and we will be after some more players this summer, then we will see if the approach has a plan or just sign whoever seems like a good idea on any given day.
 
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JUPITER said:
Our transfer hit/miss record over the last 5 years is absolutely shocking, I'm surprised that so many of you think of it as satisfactory - it really isn't for a club of our resources.
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Why don't you actually bother to do something worthwhile?

Compare our deals over the past 5 years to Chelsea, City, Liverpool and Arsenal's.

I would suspect that our ratio of hits to misses is broadly average. But until you quantify what you're saying, you're doing nothing other than whine.
 
JustAFan said:
I think one of the problems with some who judge our transfer approach is that they pay immense attention to every Manchester United transfer rumour but very little to other clubs. So they see City or Chelsea sign a player and think, wow look how direct they are in their business. But in the meantime they attach significance to every player we are rumoured to be after and think wow it takes us forever and we keep losing targets.

Truth is, if you pay attention you see all the other clubs rumoured to be after all sorts of players they never in reality come close to signing.

We have room for improvement still, and we will be after some more players this summer, then we will see if the approach has a plan or just sign whoever seems like a good idea on any given day.
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Plus we do not judge other clubs players with the same harsh standard we do with our players. Nani gave us about 4 good seasons, Valencia gave us 3 good seasons, Chicharito gave us three good seasons and you can argue that even Anderson gave us a few good seasons. But, to some those guys were all failures as transfers.
 
JUPITER said:
Our transfer hit/miss record over the last 5 years is absolutely shocking, I'm surprised that so many of you think of it as satisfactory - it really isn't for a club of our resources.
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Not all transfers are successful. Stop the fecking press.

Take a look at every club, big or small. Some transfers are great, some are not. Some are expensive and overpriced, some are cheap and absolute bargains. Some players are worth their fees, some are not. Ideally every signing we make is going to be brilliant but that's never going to fecking happen is it.
 
In Fergie's last years we brought in too many player who were bolster the squad rather than the quality needed to improve the team.

For 09-10 after losing Ronaldo and Tevez we brought in Valencia, Owen and Obertan. 19m.
For 10-11 we bought Smalling, Hernandez, Bebe, and Lindegaard joined in January. 24m.
For 11-12 we bought De Gea, Jones, Young and Scholes returned out of retirement in January. 50m.
For 12-13 we bought Van Persie, Kagawa, Buttner, Powell with Zaha bought in January for the 13-14 season. 58m.

A considerable amount of money spent and on the face of it only De Gea, Valencia, Hernandez and Van Persie have justified their moves. Fergie saw Smalling and Jones as our future pair but they rarely got opportunities together because Ferdinand and Vidic remained. While game time was important for their development, being played at RB, and in Jones's case midfield was detrimental. Evans was also in this equation and was ahead of both those two so what was actually the succession plan in defence? A case could be made that while Rio and Vidic's experience was useful, we'd have better served giving the three younger guys the chance to develop a CB pairing in the early stage of their United careers therefore being better suited to each other and to improve their game. Having Rio and Vidic either in their way or alternating between being partners between three young defenders did nothing to develop them as individuals as we're seeing now in 2015 and all three have been huge disappointments.

Valencia has always been a useful cog to Fergie's sides but perhaps we should have gone more towards buying a superstar rather than an addition. By the time Young arrived to be another winger in our side we probably should have pushed the boat more after being easily beaten in the CL Final. That defeat to Barca should have been the catalyst for a rebuild but Fergie probably didn't have the hunger to go through it again so bought reliable performers in the Prem to be squad players. They accepted that role but now with Fergie gone and the other teams taking a march over us, it looks like a big mistake.

Kagawa didn't suit our style of play but then so many players have joined us and looked out of place it's surely more than a coincidence. Van Gaal is getting rid of what he doesn't see as worthwhile and whilst there is an argument that splashing cash all over the place is hollow a lot would argue it needs to be done. I am of the belief though that after the summer spending, the manager needs to show he can get the best out of those players before going all out in the summer otherwise we'll keep hitting this trend of recycling players. Why do players regress in their performances after joining United? 3 managers have had this issue. Fergie managed to succeed with two or three players having good games and the rest doing a job. I don't subscribe that he got every drop out of every player because so many players had below standard individual performances regularly. We did enough to hold on and had core players dragging the team on. In 12/13 RvP, Rio and Evans, De Gea and Rafael did well.
 
It was always going to take more than 1 transfer window to sort this shit out. I'm relatively happy with the players we've signed but there are still some startling deficiencies in this team that need to be addressed come summer.
 
United fans are a miserable bunch of cnuts aren't they?
 
Barney said:
That's absolute nonsense.
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Care to elaborate? By unquestionable success, I am excluding Lewandowski or Suarez as I think it's about the same degree of success as Di Maria. Who exactly do you think I am missing from the four I have mentioned.
 
NinjaFletch said:
Why don't you actually bother to do something worthwhile?

Compare our deals over the past 5 years to Chelsea, City, Liverpool and Arsenal's.

I would suspect that our ratio of hits to misses is broadly average. But until you quantify what you're saying, you're doing nothing other than whine.
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There's no need to be rude or combative. Unless you work for the club I'm not insulting you, or anyone. I'm just voicing my opinion, which is as worthwhile as anything you, or anyone else can do on an internet forum dedicated to subjective opinions. What I'm not doing is insulting individual members for having an opinion different to mine - so ultimately what I'm doing is far more worthwhile than your reaction to it, which is actually the only 'whining' I've seen in this thread thus far.

In response to your point - there are loads of threads on this very forum highlighting our hits/misses ratio and how poor it is. Dig one out if you want to disprove what I'm saying - I've already read them over many times and this thread is my reaction to the data within them.
 
Boycott said:
In Fergie's last years we brought in too many player who were bolster the squad rather than the quality needed to improve the team.
now in 2015 and all three have been huge disappointments.

Valencia has always been a useful cog to Fergie's sides but perhaps we should have gone more towards buying a superstar rather than an addition. By the time Young arrived to be another winger in our side we probably should have pushed the boat more after being easily beaten in the CL Final. That defeat to Barca should have been the catalyst for a rebuild but Fergie probably didn't have the hunger to go through it again so bought reliable performers in the Prem to be squad players. They accepted that role but now with Fergie gone and the other teams taking a march over us, it looks like a big mistake.
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I'd go as far as saying the appropriate time for a rebuild was straight after the '99 CL final.

Boycott said:
Kagawa didn't suit our style of play but then so many players have joined us and looked out of place it's surely more than a coincidence. Van Gaal is getting rid of what he doesn't see as worthwhile and whilst there is an argument that splashing cash all over the place is hollow a lot would argue it needs to be done. I am of the belief though that after the summer spending, the manager needs to show he can get the best out of those players before going all out in the summer otherwise we'll keep hitting this trend of recycling players. Why do players regress in their performances after joining United? 3 managers have had this issue. Fergie managed to succeed with two or three players having good games and the rest doing a job. I don't subscribe that he got every drop out of every player because so many players had below standard individual performances regularly. We did enough to hold on and had core players dragging the team on. In 12/13 RvP, Rio and Evans, De Gea and Rafael stood out.
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I am of the belief that unless we go all out in the summer my head will explode.
 
Nickosaur said:
Not all transfers are successful. Stop the fecking press.

Take a look at every club, big or small. Some transfers are great, some are not. Some are expensive and overpriced, some are cheap and absolute bargains. Some players are worth their fees, some are not. Ideally every signing we make is going to be brilliant but that's never going to fecking happen is it.
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Who are our best 5 signings over the last 5 years? And then list Chelsea or City's best over the same time period.

By your logic it should all balance out perfectly - by mine, it won't.
 
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