Big transfers

R0nald0

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We have made 8 transfers of £50m or more. Right now, you could say 1 of those has been successful.


Manchester United’s most expensive transfers of all time

  1. Paul Pogba
    Signed from Juventus in 2016: £89 million
  2. Antony
    Signed from Ajax in 2022: £81.3 million
  3. Harry Maguire
    Signed from Leicester City in 2019: £80 million
  4. Romelu Lukaku
    Signed from Everton in 2017: £75 million
  5. Jadon Sancho
    Signed from Borussia Dortmund in 2020: £72.6 million
  6. Casemiro
    Signed from Real Madrid in 2022: £60 million
  7. Angel di Maria
    Signed from Real Madrid in 2014: £59.7 million
  8. Aaron Wan-Bissaka
    Signed from Crystal Palace in 2019: £50 million

Are we rubbish at making big transfer signings?
 

Pexbo

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Yes it appears that we are.

That was easy
 

Lux Thunder

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It's easy, we had no clear philosophy on the football side of the club for years, what we could see with our manager appointments. When you have no philosophy you don't know for a certain what player you are searching for in a market and it makes your scouts pretty much useless too. And it's a deadly combination to have no philosophy and financial power, you will get robbed for sure.
 

dove

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Yes we are rubbish and tend to go for the hype instead of ability.

That was easy.
 

led_scholes

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Casemiro is successful for now.
Antony and Sancho can be.
Lukaku and Di maria were not awful, since we managed to recoup most of the fee.

Pogba was in the end atrocious. Maguire the same. AWB not good but not awful, especially if we can sell him for 30 millions.

But I think in general, the correlation of huge fee and flop is probably r=+0.8.
 

vanrooney

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we were shit the last few years. single players, esp attackers dont function when the team is not playing well. it will get better with eth. just look at rashy, sancho and antony will also develop. and casemiro is a hit for sure. awb is a good squad player at the least. maguire should be sold
 

Crashoutcassius

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Maguire and to a lesser extent pogba were fine. If people mean as an investment then yes bad, but as players that we signed they were important players for the club at least. Maguire had some good seasons, pogba some ok seasons and some good spells. We are generally not a good team and aren't winning things, but the few things we did win and the few finals we did get to / top fours we got those guys were important.

Lukaku is a bit like Maguire now, just stylistically not a match for the new manager Vs the old one. Classic issue that we have run into over and over. It just happened a bit quicker for Lukaku.

Adm ... We can only put that down to him I feel. Weak mentality of the quotes attributed to him are to be believed.

Antony and Sancho haven't been given a chance.

AWB was a high potential player signed for a normal fee for that kind of player. Didn't develop, will move on for a loss. City have done in twenty times I don't know why we care
 

Chairman Steve

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Most of those transfers are in the Woodward era, where there was zero fecking planning.

Now big transfers back in the Ferguson days, we were good at it.

£30m for Rio was excellent. £27m for Rooney was worth it. £19m for RVN was money well spent.
 

Buster15

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We have made 8 transfers of £50m or more. Right now, you could say 1 of those has been successful.


Manchester United’s most expensive transfers of all time

  1. Paul Pogba
    Signed from Juventus in 2016: £89 million
  2. Antony
    Signed from Ajax in 2022: £81.3 million
  3. Harry Maguire
    Signed from Leicester City in 2019: £80 million
  4. Romelu Lukaku
    Signed from Everton in 2017: £75 million
  5. Jadon Sancho
    Signed from Borussia Dortmund in 2020: £72.6 million
  6. Casemiro
    Signed from Real Madrid in 2022: £60 million
  7. Angel di Maria
    Signed from Real Madrid in 2014: £59.7 million
  8. Aaron Wan-Bissaka
    Signed from Crystal Palace in 2019: £50 million

Are we rubbish at making big transfer signings?
Yes. And your data supports that.
 

SilentWitness

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Most of the big PL transfers haven't worked out. It's not just you.
 

UpWithRivers

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Lets be honest. We didn't exactly give them a platform to succeed. the last 10 years have been a sht show. Different managers. Different styles. And thats even before we talk about the jacuzzi and old biddies in the canteen
 

V.O.

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I can only think of Real Madrid with a pretty good success rate of huge money moves, and even then the likes of Kaka and Hazard immediately went to shit, and James Rodriguez never came close to justifying the money.
 

eire-red

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The recent ones yes, but it's not been just us. Dembele, Griezmann, Coutinho, Hazard, Ronaldo (to Juve), Grealish you could all claim have been a failure to different degrees.

Our big signings under Fergie were generally successful though? Historically, our best signings have been the ones where we've brought in players just on the fringes of breaking into that "top quality" bracket.
 

Welbeckham

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Are we rubbish at making big transfer signings?
I'd say expensive signings in general are usually not very smart. The price tag will always put on extra pressure and it will be hard to get rid of these players.

These are the most expensive signings in PL history:

1. Enzo Fernández, Chelsea (too early to tell)
2. Jack Grealish, Manchester City (far from a success so far)
3. Romelu Lukaku, Chelsea (flop)
4. Paul Pogba, Manchester United (far from a success)
5. Antony, Manchester United (heavily overpriced unless something magical happens)
6. Harry Maguire, Manchester United (flop)
7. Jadon Sancho, Manchester United (far from a success so far)
8. Romelu Lukaku, Manchester United (far from a success)
9. Virgil van Dijk, Liverpool (success)
10. Wesley Fofana, Chelsea (permanently injured)
11. Darwin Núñez, Liverpool (heavily overpriced unless something magical happens)
12. Kai Havertz, Chelsea (far from a success so far)
13. Nicolas Pépé, Arsenal (flop)
14. Kepa Arrizabalaga, Chelsea (flop)
15. Kevin de Bruyne, Manchester City (success)
16. Ángel Di María, Manchester United (flop)
17. Rúben Dias, Manchester City (success)
18. Casemiro, Manchester United (success)

19. Alexander Isak, Newcastle United (too early to tell)
20. Myh’ailo Mudryk, Chelsea (too early to tell)



In the 21th to 50th range there are plenty of flops too, but it's more 50/50.

Flops: Morata, Pulisic, Ndombele, Keita, Martial, Torres, Mendy, Werner
Successes (to some degree): Mahrez, Cancelo, Laporte, Bruno, Rodri, Alisson, Haaland, Lisandro Martinez, Walker
Middle ground: Sterling, Fred, Ben White, Stones, Lacazette, Sané


Safe to say signing very expensive players isn't a particularly effective strategy for any club. Obviously money helps and something eventually sticks, but good tactical structure makes it easier for players to adapt. That's why City's defenders and midfielders and Liverpool's strikers (before Nunez) have adapted so seamlessly in recent years.
 

December_16

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50 million is kind of arbitrary. It’s relevant in this day and age, but many of our succesful big money signings in our history, while breaking records at the time, were nowhere near 50 million. Rio, Rooney, Ruud, Berbatov, etc. would’ve costed top dollars today, and they were certainly massive successes.
 

tenpoless

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Any chance they only fail because of the price and not the quality?

If you signed Maguire for 30m he could be considered a decent signing and defo not a failure.

The expectations and how people judge success goes up according to the transfer fee. Current Messi for 200m can be seen as a failure. Its time people look past transfer fee and starts looking at players wages because fee is not up to them but you can hold them accountable for the amount they earn as wages. Its more fair that way I reckon.
 

NewDawnFades

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Isn't the issue more the club has been so poorly managed (board level) during this period, it would be sheer luck if a Woodward signing on this scale paid off.

Also Lukaku wasn't such a bad signing when you consider we didn't make too much of a loss on him, stopped Chelsea getting him, and got two peak years from him.
 

tjb

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The issue has more to do with the market being bloated.
Young players are being way overhyped with a look into the future and as a result, big money moves that should be all but guaranteed successes are missing the mark.

10 years ago, a player signing from Benfica would never break the British transfer record. A player like Antony would never cost 80+ million even when accounting for inflation. Clubs are asking for king ransoms for young unproven talent. Making it a lot more risky to go into the market.

A natural counter to this has been the increasing advent of free transfer opportunities or players running down their contract to within a year of their contracts expiring, forcing the teams to make a choice.

Another counter to this would be for young upcoming players to avoid going to certain mid-tier clubs. The likes of West Ham, Spurs or Everton are clubs who demand way too high a fee because they deem themselves more impressive than their achievements state.

Moving forward, young players will need to plan their careers a bit more than they have in the past. A wrong move can set a player back a few years due to the steep transfer fees from the market. Signing shorter contracts and running them down might be the only way to ensure reasonable transfer fees in the market.
 

Bondi77

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Watched Enzo today and he looks good but if that is the fee for a player with his skill set then the football world has gone mad!
 

Red in STL

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Most of those transfers are in the Woodward era, where there was zero fecking planning.

Now big transfers back in the Ferguson days, we were good at it.

£30m for Rio was excellent. £27m for Rooney was worth it. £19m for RVN was money well spent.
Were we?
Juan Sebastian Veron, Massimo Taibi, Kleberson, Bebe, Eric Djemba Djemba, Diego Forlan, Karel Poborsky, Neil Webb were not exactly cheap and weren't very good for us
 

croadyman

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Pogba wasn’t so bad honestly we had off and on moments.

Di Maria was tough luck. LVG was an idiot about it.
Yeah he ripped it up for first month then picked up an injury around time of derby and then LVG moved him out wide for no reason
 

SinNombre

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Were we?
Juan Sebastian Veron, Massimo Taibi, Kleberson, Bebe, Eric Djemba Djemba, Diego Forlan, Karel Poborsky, Neil Webb were not exactly cheap and weren't very good for us
Veron was the only big money signing from this list. The rest were all punts. The second name on your list (Taibi) came on a free transfer ffs, Bebe was agent payment for Mendes.

OP is right that Fergie got his big money transfers right for the most part. Carrick was considered expensive for a central midfielder who did not score goals and was a major success.
 

shamans

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Veron was the only big money signing from this list. The rest were all punts. The second name on your list (Taibi) came on a free transfer ffs, Bebe was agent payment for Mendes.

OP is right that Fergie got his big money transfers right for the most part. Carrick was considered expensive for a central midfielder who did not score goals and was a major success.
Carrick Ferdinand Rooney yeah I’d say he got ‘em right!
 

Sandikan

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The higher the fee the smaller the chance it is they can possibly live up to it.
Bring Sancho or Antony in for 30m as the 2nd tier type wingers who have the potential to be top tier, and no-one says a word.
Bring them in at 70-80m and they'll really struggle, as they are doing!