Agree, for me throwing away £10m+ on Amrabat for next to no return is a bigger waste of money than what Pogba gave us.
Your 5 worst signings in Premier League history?
- Thread starter Fortitude
- Start date
Antony
Sancho
Torres (Chelsea)
Pepe
Ali Dia. He wasn't even a footballer
Can think of loads more. Lukaku and Di Maria were cnuts but at least we recouped a good amount of money. Donny van Beek has been utterly fecking useless but not quite enough money was wasted to put him amongst the very worst.
Pogba and Maguire deserve a shout out too. Massive wastes of money.
Casemiro and Varane have been shit signings in hindsight too.
Sancho
Torres (Chelsea)
Pepe
Ali Dia. He wasn't even a footballer
Can think of loads more. Lukaku and Di Maria were cnuts but at least we recouped a good amount of money. Donny van Beek has been utterly fecking useless but not quite enough money was wasted to put him amongst the very worst.
Pogba and Maguire deserve a shout out too. Massive wastes of money.
Casemiro and Varane have been shit signings in hindsight too.
£10 million for one year of Amrabat being crap isn't much better than £90 million for 6 years of Pogba mostly being crap.
I see it differently - cost to benefit. He’s the most expensive CB ever and one of the highest paid players in the league. For that I expect VVD levels, not some decent performances we could have got from Smalling or Lindelof.
Didn’t think he was just sprung to mind when I thought about the Kepa signing.
6 years where he at least played around half of it though. Poor signing all the same.
Our big problem over the last 10+ years has been getting the money spent into our actual first XI. So much money wasted on players that either haven't improved it or have been injured too often.
Miles better than Lindelof (who is a worse signing). He's even been our best CB this season.
Doesn't come close to the money we've wasted on others for next to no return on the pitch whatsoever.
For us it was :
Keita
Benteke
Carroll
Balotelli
And a pick of these: Karius, Diouf, Markovic, Keane, Aquillani
Keita
Benteke
Carroll
Balotelli
And a pick of these: Karius, Diouf, Markovic, Keane, Aquillani
Antony, Lukaku (Chelsea), Pepe, Carroll, Shevchenko.
The English Premier league. Only 10 years old and has Manchester United as its only team.
Speaking of Carroll and Downing, Robbie Keane to Liverpool is one that flies under the radar. He was pretty awful.
Special shout out also to City who have made a lot of terrible signings since they won the pools.
Mangala (£32m)
Claudio Bravo (£17m)
Robinho (£32m)
Jovetic (£24m)
Jo (£20m)
Mendy (£50m)
Bony (£25m)
K. Phillips (£42m)
Regardless, Antony is the worst signing of all time.
Special shout out also to City who have made a lot of terrible signings since they won the pools.
Mangala (£32m)
Claudio Bravo (£17m)
Robinho (£32m)
Jovetic (£24m)
Jo (£20m)
Mendy (£50m)
Bony (£25m)
K. Phillips (£42m)
Regardless, Antony is the worst signing of all time.
This is not easy we had some stinkers early on but I'll go with:
Jo, Glauber, Rodwell, Mangala, Mendy.
Jo, Glauber, Rodwell, Mangala, Mendy.
Roque Santa Cruz deserves a shout-out.
I miss City's banter years under Garry Cook. Santa Cruz for 18m was another one.
I’d forgotten about the existence of Jo. Not seen anything of him before or after either.
Only ones from United that can be on the list are Sancho, Di Maria and Antony
People saying Pogba, Casemiro, Maguire, Malacia, Mount
What did I even expect when I opened this thread
People saying Pogba, Casemiro, Maguire, Malacia, Mount
What did I even expect when I opened this threadSo many things completely wrong with this
First of all, how many defenders have shown peak van Dijk levels in the last 5 years?
Secondly, Gvardiol is the most expensive centre back ever
Lastly, Maguire is light years ahead of Smalling and Lindelöf, if you think his first two seasons were just "decent performances", you either have an agenda against him or you didn't really see what you were watching
Weren’t Chelsea already going through when Shevchenko scored that goal? It was all a bit sad he was extraordinary at Kyiv and Milan.
Good list but DVB is a nothing player but hardly worst ever material.
Antony
Sanchez -> United
Torres
Carroll (they had so much money and spent it so poorly)
Pepe (must have been a dodgy deal)
Shouldn't we look at more than just the fee? Those have obviously crept up in the past 30 years, but so have revenues. Is the £42m for Kalvin Phillips more or less consequential for City than Keegan burning £3.5m on Vuoso in 2002, a dud who did not make a single appearance before being shipped out at a loss?
There's probably loads of cases of clubs further down the league table blowing their entire budgets on the wrong players, which have suffered heavier consequences than Chelsea buying Torres or United buying Mount or whatever.
There's probably loads of cases of clubs further down the league table blowing their entire budgets on the wrong players, which have suffered heavier consequences than Chelsea buying Torres or United buying Mount or whatever.
forgot Aquilani existed, signed as the Alonso replacement and was dreadful
can remember Rebrov and Steve Marlet were massive big money flops at the time, especially Rebrov who’d smashed it at Kyiv with Shevchenko
can remember Rebrov and Steve Marlet were massive big money flops at the time, especially Rebrov who’d smashed it at Kyiv with Shevchenko
VDB has played less than 2,200 minutes for us. £35m+ plus wages in 4 years.
So £60m+ for less than 600 (average at very best) minutes per season and is now pretty much worthless fee wise.
He's definitely up with the worst.
That 40k per was a huge sum in the early 2000s, probably easily 200k+ in today's market.
Not even close to top 5. He played a key role in us finishing 3rd and 2nd in back to back seasons and also scored in the Europa League final.
Pound for pound that's a lot better value for money than shite like Mudryk and Enzo.
van de BeekOnly ones from United that can be on the list are Sancho, Di Maria and Antony
People saying Pogba, Casemiro, Maguire, Malacia, Mount
For Casemiro to be there he'll have to stay for the duration of his contract and be terrible for the rest of it as well.
If he goes at the end of the season, then one good season and one bad season will make him not great, but not a disaster either.
I guess that’s why he’s not being mentioned more often. Because that was a grotesquely bad transfer. And everybody knew before he even kicked a ball for them, that it wouldn’t work out.
We see it differently and this is clearly a subjective issue. In your point re VVD, exactly, is it unreasonable to expect a CB who cost more and is paid more to be at that level? I don’t, and I think a lot of Utd fans expected that too.
The numbers I’m seeing suggest Maguire cost more than Gvardiol. It’s actually a good thing you brought him up, in his short career I’ve seen more from in the WC and at City than I’ve ever seen from Maguire.
I’m surprised there’s Utd fans who think Maguire was a good signing. He’s one of the most expensive players of all time, and fell far short of expectations.
Shevchenkos 30 mil flop from 2006 (one of the best forwards in the world at the time) adjusted for inflation is still 20 million cheaper than Antony really highlights how much we overpay for absolute dross
really highlights how much we overpay for absolute drossNot for 34m. He was relatively cheap
Nah. He's in the Drinkwater and Scott Parker to Chelsea sort of league of signings. An expensive mistake, sure, but not a signing that was meant to take a club to the next level and totally failed.
He was one of the best CBs in the Premier League at 26 years of age at Leicester, when we bought him. Not to mention that he's English. He then continued to be one of the best centre backs in the league in his first two seasons at the club. He was abysmal in 2021/22, but that goes for every single player that was part of that squad. Since then, he's been the same player as before, but has been out of favor under ten Hag.
If you look at how much the van Dijk transfer raised CB fees in the last 5 years: Gvardiol, de Ligt, Fofana, and Dias all went for similar or bigger fees in the case of the Croatian.
He's really not too dissimilar of a profile AND level to de Ligt or Dias. If Maguire went to City and we got Dias or de Ligt instead in 2019, he would have been considered a top 5 centre back in the world for the last 5 years. However, he made the mistake of joining a dysfunctional team, club, and environment which got his reputation ruined.
So Newcastle signing say Michael Owen for £21 million and Albert luque for £17 million in 2005 and them both flopping should make them far bigger flops than Mount or Mudryk since United and Chelseas current income is far bigger than Newcastle's income of 2005
That's why he was such a flop, not why he wasn't.
You're Man United, thinking 2nd, 3rd and the Europa league is something to be pleased with is crazy.
If that’s the test then this whole thread needs revisiting. Sancho would look pretty good in the City team, as would Di Maria and Pogba, so they can’t be considered bad transfers by Utd. Lots of ‘flops’ would look great in an all-dominating City team, so only a few players would qualify in this thread, like Phillips who City signed.
Is this that stupid "standards" logic again?
Pogba was ultimately not a successful signing for United, but he played over 200 games for the club, won the Europa League and League Cup, and was an important piece in our 2nd and 3rd place finishes during our banter era as a club.
I wasn't even a fan of his and was glad when he left, but what is one player supposed to do? Win the Premier League on his own? No matter which player you would've signed in their prime for United post-Ferguson, they weren't going to win us the PL or CL on their own. The squad wasn't ever good enough for that, nor was the environment, and the ambition wasn't there either under the Glazers...
Not on 350,000.
I mostly agree with all of that, but you also have to factor in the fee (was it £60m?), his wages (£350,000?) and the fact that this sort of decline wasn't totally unthinkable even at the time (age, body type, trophies already won, etc). A club the size of United should be able to properly assess those sorts of transfer risks. He's not in any way, shape or form one of the worst signings of all time, at least not yet, we'll have to wait and see what happens during the remainder of his contract, but it feels unlikely he will be remembered as a particularly shrewd signing.
Relative to the budget they had Brewster to Sheff Utd was a disaster
But Maguire had two great seasons at United where he was undoubtedly amongst the best centre halves in the whole Premier League. I could even make a case for him being the best one in the 2020/21 season as van Dijk missed almost the whole season due to injury. Whether you agree with this last sentence or not, his first two seasons alone easily absolve him of being labelled as any kind of flop, let alone one of the biggest ones in Premier League history.
Bakayoko for Chelsea was shite. Went to Milan and Gattuso said something about how he needs to learn how to play football