Fergie's biggest mistake- summer 2009

Adam-Utd

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Robben/Sneijder for one reason or another chooses other teams, could be us not pursuing them.

Glazer's aren't sugar daddy, but Robben and Sneijder weren't actually expensive players back then, they move for around 30M. If SAF wants them I don't think 30M would be an issue.
It was though. There's a reason we needed the 80m up front, back then our finances were in a mess with lots of debt.

Whether Fergie would of wanted them or not who knows, but it would have been a much better deal and i'm sure they would have jumped at joining us. We were the best in the world at that point and Bayern were nowhere near what they are now.

Even signing Ribery would have been better.
 

Mr Smith

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As I have said before, I am quite convinced that we never spent the Ronaldo money because we were in massive debt at the time and the Glazers demanded the money be put towards that. I'm quite confident that if someone had showed Fergie that our books were in a bad state at the time, he would have aquiested to this.

I do think more could have been done to keep Tevez, but I can understand why he left as he played a bit-part role that season and barely started a league game.
 

Champagne Football

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You can't keep a player who desperately wants to leave. Just look at the problems we've had with Pogba and Di Maria before that. Ronaldo earned his right to leave. He was WPOTY and landed us a load of trophies. He owed us nothing.

Tevez never liked Manchester. Only went to City as they offered him double than all other clubs even though he wasn't settled in Manchester. After a while at City he got depressed and gave up.

Valencia was electric as our right winger until I think a Liverpool player broke his ankle, and after he lost some of his famous pace.

At a club like Man Utd, there's no guarantees you're going to sign whoever you want every summer. In 2013 we were told Cristiano and Bale were coming but ended up with Fellaini instead. Some summers the players you want are not available and you have to take a punt on an Ole gunnar Solskjaer or a Tony Valencia or a Bebe. Sometimes the punt pays off, sometimes it doesn't.
 

Nou_Camp99

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Fergie had his hands tied. Debt interest Payments were out of control back then hence the no value in the market BS we got fed. The debt repayments now are a lot more manageable and which is why we can invest heavily most summers.
 

Luke1995

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About Hargreaves, at the time when he started getting injured, Anderson was seen as someone with alot of potential for the future, that's probably why Fergie didn't look for new signings in that position.
 

manutddjw

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I think we our underestimating our financial power at the time. While our spending paled in comparison to the sugar daddy clubs, we were still spending money on players. Anderson, Nani, Tevez's loan fee and Hargreaves in 2007/2008, club record on Berbatov, what would've smashed our record for Lucas Moura and then paying over the odds for Valencia and Young (1 year left on his contract). Not to mention pissing away tons of money on punts like Bebe, Obertan, Manucho and Diouf (Hernandez worked out though) but 3 million here and 7 million there adds up especially when a worldie could've been had for 25 million at the time.

It's hard to complain because of the success we enjoyed at the time, but we were poor in recruitment. If you look at players that moved during that time period and what they cost, for the money we spent we should've had a much better squad of players. We spent the same amount on Bebe that Juventus paid for Vidal.
 

sparx99

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Ah yes, you are right. In that case I don't think he would've come, we had one chance to get him.
You never know. Madrid sold Robben for and Sneijder in part to fund a move for Ronaldo. They got €25m from Bayern for Robben and €15m for Sneijder from Inter. A better deal for us in hindsight would have £45m plus Robben and Sneijder.
 

groovyalbert

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You never know. Madrid sold Robben for and Sneijder in part to fund a move for Ronaldo. They got €25m from Bayern for Robben and €15m for Sneijder from Inter. A better deal for us in hindsight would have £45m plus Robben and Sneijder.
Sneijder was by no means the player then that he went on to become at Inter, so I'm not completely surprised we didn't show an interest in him then. I'm also not totally sure where we would have fit him into our team/style of play with Rooney either at that point. In hindsight, however, he would have been an excellent addition.

Robben I totally agree with. He would have been like Kanchelskis reincarnated and upgraded. Perfect Fergie player.
 

davidmichael

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The mistakes were we didn’t replace Ronaldo and Tevez adequately as we replaced them with Valencia and Owen, we replaced the best player in the world and a world class striker with Wigan’s right winger and an injury prone past his prime striker.

What we should have done is tell Real that we wanted £80 million plus Robben who was available and ended up going to Bayern and who was the perfect replacement for Ronaldo as Robben was on that tier of players below Ronaldo and Messi at the time.

Also should have replaced Tevez with Benzema who left Lyon that year which would have given us a front three/four of a peak Rooney, Robben, Benzema and Giggs/Nani which in 2009/10 would have been better than anything anyone else had outside of Barca and Real.
 

Offside

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The mistakes were we didn’t replace Ronaldo and Tevez adequately as we replaced them with Valencia and Owen, we replaced the best player in the world and a world class striker with Wigan’s right winger and an injury prone past his prime striker.

What we should have done is tell Real that we wanted £80 million plus Robben who was available and ended up going to Bayern and who was the perfect replacement for Ronaldo as Robben was on that tier of players below Ronaldo and Messi at the time.

Also should have replaced Tevez with Benzema who left Lyon that year which would have given us a front three/four of a peak Rooney, Robben, Benzema and Giggs/Nani which in 2009/10 would have been better than anything anyone else had outside of Barca and Real.
Rooney was the best striker on the planet that season and Valencia did greater for “Wigan’s right winger”...PFA team of the season. It’s the neglect of the midfield that was the real problem.
 

davidmichael

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Rooney was the best striker on the planet that season and Valencia did greater for “Wigan’s right winger”...PFA team of the season. It’s the neglect of the midfield that was the real problem.
Maybe I undersold Valencia in that comment but he was nowhere near the level of Robben and we had a genuine chance to get him as Real wanted rid and were desperate for Ronaldo, hell we could have probably told Real £80 million plus Robben and Sneijder and they’d have gone for it.

I think we probably a quality midfielder light as Hargreaves was injured a lot and Scholes was in his final season, I can’t actually remember what quality midfielders were around or available back then but in Fletcher and Carrick we had two good/solid players so only needed to add Sneijder plus one more.
 

NinjaZombie

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I have no doubts that United made several mistakes in the market post Ronaldo. Whether it's penny pinching or Fergie not identifying proper players (instead of Michael fecking Owen), we'll probably never know.

City bought Aguero and David Silva a couple of years after Ronaldo left. Proper professionals and quality players.
 

Offside

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I have no doubts that United made several mistakes in the market post Ronaldo. Whether it's penny pinching or Fergie not identifying proper players (instead of Michael fecking Owen), we'll probably never know.

City bought Aguero and David Silva a couple of years after Ronaldo left. Proper professionals and quality players.
And we played a friendly against Valencia in the Summer of 2009 where a United fan had “sign Silva and Aguero” on a banner. United fans always knew best.

In all seriousness you’re right it was very frustrating. City started getting players just to stop us from buying them like Milner and Nasri.
 

mancave bear

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As others have said, maybe SAF found it too easy to win the League and didnt really want to spend the money investing in his own vision - I felt like he just wanted to retire and get out of there in the end, but by that time I felt he held on to some players way too long.
Or it was the effect of the Glazers starting to get their will at our club, after taking over in 2005.
 

Baneofthegame

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Should of got Robben in the Ronaldo deal, that’s about it, even without him in the deal he went for as much as we bought Valencia for basically.

But really before FFP we really missed our chance on a lot of good players, some of them (Hazard and Aguero I believe) Fergie said were too expensive and agents fees etc. Which in hindsight were bargains and made it clear to me that he was being held back in terms of funds for the squad, which makes the title wins all the more impressive.
 

romufc

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Which in hindsight were bargains and made it clear to me that he was being held back in terms of funds for the squad, which makes the title wins all the more impressive.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

We never know how well the players would have fared at United either. We can all say it was a mistake, yet Fergie got into CL final and won the league few times after that.

Fast forward to when we spent alot of money and the best we have to show is a EL and 2nd place finish.
 

Baneofthegame

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Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

We never know how well the players would have fared at United either. We can all say it was a mistake, yet Fergie got into CL final and won the league few times after that.

Fast forward to when we spent alot of money and the best we have to show is a EL and 2nd place finish.
Yeah, hindsight is the worst.

Although I’m fairly certain if Fergie had a billion to spend we would have a lot more to show for it.
 

romufc

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Yeah, hindsight is the worst.

Although I’m fairly certain if Fergie had a billion to spend we would have a lot more to show for it.
The problem with alot of money is players sometimes feel they have nothing to prove. Would he have got the same level of dedication from a £60m midfielder from Madrid over Fletcher?

It was a time where football power was shifting, he saw it with Rooney, Pogba and the like where money done the talking.

I agree in a few of the season, if we had a few more players, we would have more to show for it.

The 9/10 season where we went out to Bayern, if we had another Striker of Rooney's quality we could have gone to the final.
 

KeanoMagicHat

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Fergie's biggest mistake...they only won two more league titles and another Champions League final. They lost to one of the greatest teams in history in the Champions League final. The leagues they lost were on goal difference with the last kick of the game and by one point to Chelsea where Drogba scored a clear offside goal at Old Trafford. Some mistake.

The revisionism of 2009-13 as the 'start of the decline' when United were very successful annoys me. United won the league by April 22nd in his last year. Some key players of the squad were ageing but if you look at the team that season - De Gea was 23, Rafael was 23, Jones was 21, Evans was 25, Smalling was 24, Welbeck was 23, Hernandez was 25, Kagawa was 24, Cleverley was 24. You can say now 'oh most of those players were never good enough'...but they were good enough to be in a squad winning leagues at the time. It's Fergie's fault for picking Moyes perhaps, but it's not Fergie's fault that successive managers made a balls of the squad.

1) Ronaldo. Fergie has reputation as ruthless manager. Allowing best player in the world who is under long term contract to leave in his best years just because "Real is his dream" was bad decision.
2) Tevez. Not doing everything and on time to keep Tevez was mistake.
3) Not signing quality in midfield where Hargreaves was injury plagued and right back where we only had Brown was mistake.
4) Selling Pique season earlier was mistake
5) Even if he couldn't stop Tevez and Ronaldo transfers then he should have bought another top players on that positions. Not bloody Valencia and Owen.
Teams have peaks and troughs, it would have been very hard, almost impossible, to replace Ronaldo. I agree on Tevez with the signing of Berbatov didn't help but from what I've read Tevez wasn't that popular in the team, fell out with Fergie and they had big trouble with his agent, was third-party ownership back then if I remember with Kia Joorabchian.

Pique was always going to Barcelona, he's a hardcore Catalan, that's just hindsight. You just said Rio and Vidic was the best defending duo in the world and Pique wanted a starting position. There's no way he could get it at that time.

Bloody Valencia was on PFA Team of the Year in his first season and won United player of the year in 2011-12. Valencia was a very good winger, then a very good full-back late in his career, despite some horrible injuries. Valencia was a fine signing. Owen was free. Agree about midfield.
 
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L1nk

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For some reason, for a long while at this club, we just seemed to have a massive aversion to spending a single pound on a Central Midfielder, i remember us crying out for new ones around this time, i mean we got to a point of playing Rafael and others in CM we were that desperate, and yet we still just wouldn't do it, it was so odd.
 

Baneofthegame

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The problem with alot of money is players sometimes feel they have nothing to prove. Would he have got the same level of dedication from a £60m midfielder from Madrid over Fletcher?

It was a time where football power was shifting, he saw it with Rooney, Pogba and the like where money done the talking.

I agree in a few of the season, if we had a few more players, we would have more to show for it.

The 9/10 season where we went out to Bayern, if we had another Striker of Rooney's quality we could have gone to the final.
Just having Robben alone and that goals never scored!

But such is life, there will always be missed opportunities, I certainly would have trusted Fergie with the amount of money we have spent in recent years even before the Neymar inflation.

Moyes is the one who completely ruined it in my opinion, only bringing in Fellaini when we needed a clear revamp despite being champions.

Anyway not to derail the original post:

Should of been given more money post Ronaldo in my opinion to get some of the players deemed too expensive which would have saved us money long term.
 

MyOnlySolskjaer

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Imo, Fergie did several mistakes in summer 2009.
1) Ronaldo. Fergie has reputation as ruthless manager. Allowing best player in the world who is under long term contract to leave in his best years just because "Real is his dream" was bad decision.
2) Tevez. Not doing everything and on time to keep Tevez was mistake.
3) Not signing quality in midfield where Hargreaves was injury plagued and right back where we only had Brown was mistake.
4) Selling Pique season earlier was mistake
5) Even if he couldn't stop Tevez and Ronaldo transfers then he should have bought another top players on that positions. Not bloody Valencia and Owen.
Our hands were tied with a lot of these. Ronaldo was never going to live in Manchester for the rest of his life. Likewise for Pique a Barcelona product.

I don't mind losing Tevez, but he should have been in for Aguero or Suarez at the time, Berbatov was a mistake.
 

mshnsh

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Just watching seasons 2008 and 2009 reviews. Personally i think that United team from 2008 is our best team ever. Despite i enjoyed watching 1999 team and Cantona's team from early 90s but this team was amazing.
World class back 5 with Rio and Vidic as best defending duo in the world, world class midfield in Carrick and Scholes, world class attack in Rooney and Tevez with Ronaldo as best player in the world. On top of that we had excellent squad depth in players like Park, Nani, O'Shea, Saha, Pique and Hargreaves.

That squad didn't have any flaw. We played attacking football with innovative asymmetric 442 formation with which we were dominant against any team and our team was full of players with strong and competitive characters.
That team should and could have been best in Europe next 5 years and be remembered as one of the best Euro sides ever (like Pep's Barca or Sacchi's Milan). But it lasted only two years. Why Fergie allowed that to happen?

Imo, Fergie did several mistakes in summer 2009.
1) Ronaldo. Fergie has reputation as ruthless manager. Allowing best player in the world who is under long term contract to leave in his best years just because "Real is his dream" was bad decision.
2) Tevez. Not doing everything and on time to keep Tevez was mistake.
3) Not signing quality in midfield where Hargreaves was injury plagued and right back where we only had Brown was mistake.
4) Selling Pique season earlier was mistake
5) Even if he couldn't stop Tevez and Ronaldo transfers then he should have bought another top players on that positions. Not bloody Valencia and Owen.
In season 2008-2009, Ronaldo was poor until the final couple of months than he improved.
 

romufc

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Just having Robben alone and that goals never scored!

But such is life, there will always be missed opportunities, I certainly would have trusted Fergie with the amount of money we have spent in recent years even before the Neymar inflation.

Moyes is the one who completely ruined it in my opinion, only bringing in Fellaini when we needed a clear revamp despite being champions.

Anyway not to derail the original post:

Should of been given more money post Ronaldo in my opinion to get some of the players deemed too expensive which would have saved us money long term.
I agree, a player like Robben would have changed games like Ronaldo did.

Lets not discuss Moyes, that was a bad period and it showed how lack of management / authority can ruin a football club.

I agree Fergie should have been given more money but it is not something I will hold against Fergie. When you have been working with a principle and it is successful, it is a big change from spending £30/40m to £80/90m
 

Denis' cuff

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It's obvious that the Glazers had a big impact on that. Fergie was never shy about spending big, especially to replace big players if it was their time to go. He regularly through the years spent big on strikers, spent big on other star players when one was leaving. Yet we lost Ronaldo and Tevez and brought in Valencia and Owen. His hands were tied, and he made it work all the same (winning 2 titles, combined 1 point and a few goals away from winning the 2 other titles, 1 more CL title, then bad luck to exit the CL in 2 of the other 3 seasons in games where we were the better side). So I wouldn't call it a mistake. That was the time when the ownership was at it's worst for us and really hampering us from pushing on, and instead the level dropped a big but Fergie still made it work.
exactly

staggering how people persist with “Fergie never replaced....”, “Fergie saw no value....”
 

Xaviesta

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When Eto'o left Barcelona in 2009, I was a bit surprised United didn't make a move for him but having Berbatov around probably put pay to that idea. United did well to keep Ronaldo for as long as they did to be fair.
 

UnitedFan93

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Back then the debt (Glazer debt) was spiralling out of control and we were in the middle of a global recession. We didn't have much money to spend and the Ronaldo money was used to service the debt.

The whole 'no value in the transfer market' line came from the Glazers. We missed out on some really talented players because of the debt.
 

Josh 76

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For some reason, for a long while at this club, we just seemed to have a massive aversion to spending a single pound on a Central Midfielder, i remember us crying out for new ones around this time, i mean we got to a point of playing Rafael and others in CM we were that desperate, and yet we still just wouldn't do it, it was so odd.
In 2008 we probably had 4 of the best CM players in the world.
Scholes. Carrick. Hargreaves. Anderson.
There were some games where Hargreaves and Anderson were first choice.
No one knew at the time Anderson would lose form, Hargreaves would get injured. Scholes was aging and Carrick needed a decent partner along side him to tick.

People tend to forget how good Hargreves and Anderson were that season .
Anderson was going toe to toe with the Likes of Gerrard and Fabregas and Hargreaves was man of the tournament for England in the 2006 world cup.
 

Amir

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@Josh 76 Plus Fletcher was developing. We were very unlucky with how things turned out with Fletcher, Anderson and Hargreaves after 2008, but not signing a CM until Fergie retired five years later was bizzare.
 

Pughnichi

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Sneijder was by no means the player then that he went on to become at Inter, so I'm not completely surprised we didn't show an interest in him then. I'm also not totally sure where we would have fit him into our team/style of play with Rooney either at that point. In hindsight, however, he would have been an excellent addition.

Robben I totally agree with. He would have been like Kanchelskis reincarnated and upgraded. Perfect Fergie player.
How dare you!!...you can’t get an upgrade on Kanchelskis

Man I loved that guy.
 

hmchan

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This is all down to Fergie's man management style. He would never endanger the team morale and his authority by keeping players who apparently seek to leave. As for their replacement, I think many of you are overestimating the attractiveness of United. If memory serves, I remember we wanted Hazard and Benzema so bad but these so-called "easily gettable" targets weren't interested at all. The fact that he turned Valencia into our Player of the Season is pretty impressive in fact.
 

MrPooni

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People obsess over our recruitment this season but nobody likes to talk about how the cringe inducing green and gold campaign disrupted our season by creating a toxic atmosphere around the club. I say that as an idiot ST holder who was fully invested in that shit show at the time. Still have that dumb Norwich scarf and a Newton Heath top to remind me how much of a bellend I was.
 

RooneyLegend

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In 2008 we probably had 4 of the best CM players in the world.
Scholes. Carrick. Hargreaves. Anderson.
There were some games where Hargreaves and Anderson were first choice.
No one knew at the time Anderson would lose form, Hargreaves would get injured. Scholes was aging and Carrick needed a decent partner along side him to tick.

People tend to forget how good Hargreves and Anderson were that season .
Anderson was going toe to toe with the Likes of Gerrard and Fabregas and Hargreaves was man of the tournament for England in the 2006 world cup.
In what world are Hargreaves and Anderson some of the best midfielders in the world? Our midfield was fading with Paul Scholes. We made Zero efforts to replace him because Anderson who was never good enough was the heir apparent.
 

RooneyLegend

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You'd have thought in 2010 changes were on the way but it wasn't the case at all. It was obvious by the time that some of the trusted youngsters weren't going to be all that and we had a problem with our forwards and in midfield. Bringing in only Young in 11 was madness.
 

lex talionis

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After the 08/09 season we 2 of the next 3 PL trophies and missed out on the other by a point. And we were dropped in the CL finals to an incredible Barcelona side. In 2012 we famously lost the PL trophy at the last second (by a City player whose name shall not be spoken or written) and we won it again in 2013. We were within a wild boar's hair of winning 7 straight PL trophies in Ferguson's last 7 seasons and had what is now widely regarded as the greatest club side of all time not existed, we very likely would have won 2 more CL trophies after winning it 08.

There's not too much more Ferguson could have done after Ronaldo left to have won more PL and CL trophies, but there is definitely room for questioning several individual decisions. Should Ferguson have started Berbatov, or at least had him on the bench, in the 2011 CL final -- 9 years ago today? Probably -- Owen makes the bench but Berbatov did not -- but I doubt it would have made that much of a difference as Barcelona were clearly the better side.

The better question is WTF did Ferguson given the job to Moyes, but that horse has been flogged to death over and over.
 

RooneyLegend

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After the 08/09 season we 2 of the next 3 PL trophies and missed out on the other by a point. And we were dropped in the CL finals to an incredible Barcelona side. In 2012 we famously lost the PL trophy at the last second (by a City player whose name shall not be spoken or written) and we won it again in 2013. We were within a wild boar's hair of winning 7 straight PL trophies in Ferguson's last 7 seasons and had what is now widely regarded as the greatest club side of all time not existed, we very likely would have won 2 more CL trophies after winning it 08.

There's not too much more Ferguson could have done after Ronaldo left to have won more PL and CL trophies, but there is definitely room for questioning several individual decisions. Should Ferguson have started Berbatov, or at least had him on the bench, in the 2011 CL final -- 9 years ago today? Probably -- Owen makes the bench but Berbatov did not -- but I doubt it would have made that much of a difference as Barcelona were clearly the better side.

The better question is WTF did Ferguson given the job to Moyes, but that horse has been flogged to death over and over.
Yes we did keep winning but that's because we still had some quality players and those same players were getting older and older by the season. Everyone could see that our last title winning side was far from the quality that we'd become accustomed to.

Moyes took the job at the worst possible time. He took it at a time when we needed an overhaul due to what we'd done previously in the market and because of his lack of experience at the very top level of the game he didn't realize it.

While we were messing about in the market high quality players were moving here, there and everywhere. We somehow couldn't find value.
 

Josh 76

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Alex Ferguson gambled too much on youth in that era, but it back fired massively. He probably thought why do i need to buy big when I have the two best young english centre backs in the country (smaling and Jones), two promising young Brazilian full backs (Silva and Rafael). Then there was Anderson and Nani who were supposed to be the superstars for the next decade. All spear headed by Wayne Rooney. There was 8 players he probably thought he didnt need to worry about, so why spend loads of money on one player.

But as we all know it didn't work out. In the long run. Within 3 years of the "greatest" Utd team ever the cracks were too big and that was the start of the down ward spiral.