Looking back at the summer of 09. Did it signal the end of us being a top club?

MiceOnMeth

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We sold Ronaldo for €94 million and replaced him with Antonio Valencia for €18 million. Our other reinforcements included a finished Michael Owen on a free transfer and Gabriel Obertan for €4million and Mame Diouf for €5 million meaning none of the Ronaldo money was invested back into a squad that badly needed refreshing to compete with the likes of Peps Barcelona.

Meanwhile Madrid not only took our balon dor winner they also brought in Brazilian superstar Kaka for €67million, hot prospect Benzema for €35million and one of the Premier leagues elite midfielders Xabi Alonso taking their total spend to over €200 million.

Feels quite insane looking back that Fergie was ok with this. He watched us go from breaking records for the likes of Rio and Rooney to penny pinching and signing players from Wigan (no offense to Valencia) while the European giants closed this gap significantly on us and we no longer had one of the strongest teams in Europe.

What was the mood like on here at the time? We were still the best team in England and CL finalists but did you all see the writing on the wall for our demise during this time?
 
Mood in here was pretty grim as far as signings were concerned especially when Owen was linked. There were early rumors of us signing Franck Ribery to replace Ronaldo but soon it emerged we were in record debt and then infamous Fergie quote of "no value in the market" killed any hope of us spending big. We had held onto Rooney so there was still optimism we could have a great season.
 
MiceOnMeth said:
We sold Ronaldo for €94 million and replaced him with Antonio Valencia for €18 million. Our other reinforcements included a finished Michael Owen on a free transfer and Gabriel Obertan for €4million and Mame Diouf for €5 million meaning none of the Ronaldo money was invested back into a squad that badly needed refreshing to compete with the likes of Peps Barcelona.

Meanwhile Madrid not only took our balon dor winner they also brought in Brazilian superstar Kaka for €67million, hot prospect Benzema for €35million and one of the Premier leagues elite midfielders Xabi Alonso taking their total spend to over €200 million.

Feels quite insane looking back that Fergie was ok with this. He watched us go from breaking records for the likes of Rio and Rooney to penny pinching and signing players from Wigan (no offense to Valencia) while the European giants closed this gap significantly on us and we no longer had one of the strongest teams in Europe.

What was the mood like on here at the time? We were still the best team in England and CL finalists but did you all see the writing on the wall for our demise during this time?
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Fergie was happy spending record breaking transfers before, bet he would have done it every season if he could , but when we sold C.Ronaldo he said, nah, I am happy with Own and Valencia? Yeah, I don't think so.
I also remember many fans looking down on Robben and Sneijder as Madrid flops.
A little bit of arrogance from us with regards to City and their spending, its as if we thought we could just make a couple okay-ish signings and still be world class. Thats how I see it anyways.
 
Yes, I've said it a few times on here that 09 was the beginning of the end. We stopped improving the team and instead relied on the ageing spine and Fergie's genius, which did manage to squeeze out a couple more titles afterwards.

Once the core of the 08 side declined/left (Rio, vidic, Scholes, Giggs, evra, Rooney, VDS, Ronaldo) it was pretty clear that there was a huge void left by poor or nonexistent recruitment. Cleverly, Smalling, Jones, Young, Owen etc just weren't of the level required.

If we were able to spend big while we were at the top, and brought in players like Sneijder, Ribery, Benzema like we wanted to, that transition wouldn't have been as stark. Instead we have the Glazers to thank for us falling off a cliff the second Fergie wasn't able to paper over the cracks of a neglected squad anymore.
 
We got to the CL final 2 years later…

Valencia was excellent.
 
2 man midfield said:
Yes, I've said it a few times on here that 09 was the beginning of the end. We stopped improving the team and instead relied on the ageing spine and Fergie's genius, which did manage to squeeze out a couple more titles afterwards.

Once the core of the 08 side declined/left (Rio, vidic, Scholes, Giggs, evra, Rooney, VDS, Ronaldo) it was pretty clear that there was a huge void left by poor or nonexistent recruitment. Cleverly, Smalling, Jones, Young, Owen etc just weren't of the level required.

If we were able to spend big while we were at the top, and brought in players like Sneijder, Ribery, Benzema like we wanted to, that transition wouldn't have been as stark. Instead we have the Glazers to thank for us falling off a cliff the second Fergie wasn't able to paper over the cracks of a neglected squad anymore.
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I HATE that family frigging much.
 
Moment our future was doomed(as a top club) is Glazer takeover in 2005. Ronaldo and Fergie leaving in 2009 and 2013 respectively were just important steps on that path of gradual decline.
 
I always believed a deal was there to be done with Madrid for a player exchange that included Robben and other players. But it became obvious the club needed the money. Also I think Fergie never forgave Robben for choosing Chelsea over Utd before and probably thought Robben's best days were behind him. The fact is, he played his best football when he went to Bayen after.
 
Josh 76 said:
I always believed a deal was there to be done with Madrid for a player exchange that included Robben and other players. But it became obvious the club needed the money. Also I think Fergie never forgave Robben for choosing Chelsea over Utd before and probably thought Robben's best days were behind him. The fact is, he played his best football when he went to Bayen after.
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I can see why we didn't go for Robben, even though in hindsight it would've been the best move we could've made. He was injury prone as hell, and Madrid didn't really want him.

But I remember wanting us to get one or both of Sneijder and Ribery. There was definitely a way for us to come out of the Ronaldo sale looking good, but instead we took the money, paid off the interest on the loan which gave us the privilege of having the Glazers as owners, and signed Owen and Obertan.
 
TheRedDevil'sAdvocate said:
It surely marked the period when we failed (or refused?) to evolve the squad from a position of strength.
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This is my thoughts too. This period was the start of the relevant people not getting the squad investment spot on.

Valencia, Obertan and Owen would have been fine if we got a first team ready player to go alongside.

Sadly that trend has continued since, though it is slowly starting to get better.
 
I remember thinking Valencia could be a good signing albeit not enough to replace Ronaldo. Diouf and Obertan were getting hyped based on potential. Owen seemed like a potentially shrewd free transfer but not much more than that. Overall I remember a lot of talk of "using the Ronaldo money" for the next three or four windows
 
RedKnight88 said:
A little bit of arrogance from us with regards to City and their spending, it’s as if we thought we could just make a couple okay-ish signings and still be world class. Thats how I see it anyways.
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I’m not even sure arrogance is the right word, because most people, including non Utd fans, thought the same.

The consensus, from my memory, was that yes City were getting closer but that Mancini was no Ferguson, and that there was no substitute for the experience of regularly winning titles, which Utd had and City didn’t.
 
We didn't want to immediately spend money because SAF/Gill felt clubs would rip us off since they knew we had the Ronaldo money to spend. Kind of what happened with Liverpool a year or so later when they sold Torres to Chelsea and spunked it on Andy Carroll.
 
Was obviously the beginning of the end but we still had a really strong team and Sir Alex kept us competitive at the top til he retired. But we went from one of the top 3 favourites for the CL to being a big underdog.
 
bringbackbebe said:
We didn't want to immediately spend money because SAF/Gill felt clubs would rip us off since they knew we had the Ronaldo money to spend. Kind of what happened with Liverpool a year or so later when they sold Torres to Chelsea and spunked it on Andy Carroll.
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I don't buy that. We had more than a year to plan for this given Ronnie wanted out the summer before. Could have secured targets well in advance to his eventual sale to Madrid. Obviously the landmark moment dates back to 2005 when the scum took over, but the "no value in the market" began in '09.
 
Valencia was a great signing. The summer of 09 was fine - we replaced Ronaldo by putting more of the goalscoring burden on Rooney and it worked fine.

I think Rooney's injury against Bayern ruined a lot of things though - we were probably going to make back to back CL finals and I think we would've won the league in 09/10 too. We really messed up in the 2 years after though.

10/11 we did nothing in the market apart from a young Smalling & Chicharito. We really should've reinforced the midfield then, but after Fletcher got injured, Scholes declined (leading to his first retirement) we ended up playing Giggs and Carrick in midfield to take us to the CL final.

The season after, we finally did invest in De Gea, Jones, Young - but again nothing in midfield and Young wasn't really an improvement on our current wingers. We needed someone to take the attack up a notch.
 
Bastian said:
I don't buy that. We had more than a year to plan for this given Ronnie wanted out the summer before. Could have secured targets well in advance to his eventual sale to Madrid. Obviously the landmark moment dates back to 2005 when the scum took over, but the "no value in the market" began in '09.
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The interest on the debt was very high back then and the PIKs were also looming. The glazers got lucky the interest rates dropped quite dramatically in the years to come and PL TV income shot up.
 
Josh 76 said:
I always believed a deal was there to be done with Madrid for a player exchange that included Robben and other players. But it became obvious the club needed the money. Also I think Fergie never forgave Robben for choosing Chelsea over Utd before and probably thought Robben's best days were behind him. The fact is, he played his best football when he went to Bayen after.
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I was fuming we didn't try to get Robben as part of that deal. Made complete sense, he wasn't playing much with Madrid
 
Probably. Although it was proven in later years with the Suarez and Bale sales that spanking it on loads of different players doesn’t necessarily work. Giving Rooney a more central role and signing Valencia was actually very good for us.

However, it was obvious after the CL final that we needed our midfield sorting out and the failure to rectify that, “no value in the market” etc. was complete Glazernomics. Anyone half savvy wouldn’t considered including Sneijder and/or Robben in the Ronaldo deal as they were surplus at Madrid. Snejider was the midfield player the following season close to Xavi/Iniesta and a big reason why Inter won the CL.
 
I was most disappointed we didn't sign Benzema, or a similiar profile striker. We could never directly replace Ronaldo. I thought Valencia was a solid signing, with Nani being the more flair winger. But bringing in Benzema would have provided the power and aerial threat that we lost with Ronaldo leaving, allowing Rooney to play in his preferred second striker position.

The midfield was already a concern by that time too, as Scholes and Giggs were aging, Hargreaves had injury problems, and there were doubts about Fletcher and Anderson's long term potential.

We actually managed to do pretty well over the next few seasons. Scholes and Giggs lasted longer than anyone might have predicted, Fletcher was phenomenal for a couple years before illness screwed him over, but Anderson and Hargreaves were pretty much done after that. We improved the front line eventually with Hernandez and finally Van Persie for some much needed firepower. Young players like Welbeck and Cleverly contributed, but it was clear we were a couple of top players short of where we needed to be.

Overall it did feel like we were slow in the market. We missed out on several top players towards the end of SAF's reign and then dithering Moyes. By the time the club was then willing to splash the cash we were not the preferred destination for players, so we ended up overpaying for big names and veterans who werent wanted by other top clubs and who didn't really suit what we needed.
 
No. The end was the Fergie handover into ruin.

With him at the helm, we were still competitive and players wanted to come here literally to play for him. All of that presence and aura left with him and we turned into a running joke within a few months.
 
NicolaSacco said:
I’m not even sure arrogance is the right word, because most people, including non Utd fans, thought the same.

The consensus, from my memory, was that yes City were getting closer but that Mancini was no Ferguson, and that there was no substitute for the experience of regularly winning titles, which Utd had and City didn’t.
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Why else would we have bought Rojo, Blind, Schneiderlin, Herrera all just decent-ish players to compete against David Silva, Yaya Toure and Aguero? Those players was big money the type of players we would've bought under Fergie. It really wouldn't surprised me if some at the club really thought those players was enough to still beat City in the long run.
 
Skills said:
The interest on the debt was very high back then and the PIKs were also looming. The glazers got lucky the interest rates dropped quite dramatically in the years to come and PL TV income shot up.
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That's a very relevant point actually.
 
We lost Tevez and Ronaldo in the same window and thought Valencia, Owen and Obertan would be good enough replacements.
They weren’t remotely close to being in the same league as those two players.
Valencia turned out to be an okay signing taken on its own merits but we immediately lost a bit of mystique that window, no question about it.
 
MDFC Manager said:
Say thanks to David Gill
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Say thanks to Woodward - despite his hubris and bad judgments as a footballing exec, unfortunately, he was intelligent enough as a 'spreadsheet w*nker' and finance guy to get the Glazers' unconscionable deal through when it looked unlikely. If he gets laid up at the 'wrong-time' in 2005 United's future is probably immeasurably different. FA and then-government's line on takeovers of this nature also played a larger, more structural role, but it was down to him that the worst people who could technically afford to buy the club (not through their own cash but being able to hire mercenary consultants and legal--guys supplementing Woodie's job) were able to make it happen.
 
Agree that the summer of 09 was the beginning of the end (aside from the original Glazer takeover).

We'd just been dethroned by Barcelona as the best team in Europe, and lost 2/3 of the attack that was vital in becoming the best in the world in the first place, including the balloon d'or winner Ronaldo.

The response that summer showed a lack of ambition which continued into the next two summers with the signing of outfield players who mostly would never be world class. Compare our signings to the likes of Silva, Toure, Aguero, Hazard etc.

Yes, we still could have won the next four league titles (instead of the two we did win) - but the lack of ambition foreshadowed what was to come. The poor signings allowed other teams to catch us up eventually and surpass us. And we were perhaps fortunate that domestically the competition was not great.

The decline clearly accelerated once Fergie left. But even in his last few seasons, we lost a title decider away to City in tame fashion (11/12), were knocked out by them in the cup (10/11), were thrashed by them at home (11/12), let them back into a cup game whilst they had 10 men (11/12) and lost again to them at home whilst champions elect (12/13).
 
IamBaz84 said:
This is my thoughts too. This period was the start of the relevant people not getting the squad investment spot on.

Valencia, Obertan and Owen would have been fine if we got a first team ready player to go alongside.

Sadly that trend has continued since, though it is slowly starting to get better.
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It was a disappointment for two major reasons. For starters, it was a missed opportunity to incorporate the new football trends of the time into a well-oiled machine led by a GOAT manager and several top-class players. Instead, we sleepwalked for the next few seasons, resting on our laurels and capitalizing on the league's "ebb moment" to knock Liverpool off their perch. It became worse later on because, at the time and in terms of decision-making, Ferguson was to United what Louis XIV was to France. When he retired, we had to replace not only a manager, but a whole modus operandi.

The other thing was watching our noisy neighbours with their fast-track spending catching up from 2009 to 2014. It was alright to laugh at them at the start, but it became clear as daylight that after the initial nonsense spending, they were getting more things right than wrong.

By 2012, our fear factor was Ferguson in the dugout chewing his gum. I still remember before the 1-6 game (which was a turning point moment for both clubs) a friend of mine (not a big PL fan) turning to me, after he saw Fletcher/Anderson in the midfield (against the likes of Yaya Toure, David Silva and young Barry and Milner), and asking me: "With this shower of shite, you're going to win the title?". That is where we were at the time in the eyes of the neutrals.
 
RedKnight88 said:
Why else would we have bought Rojo, Blind, Schneiderlin, Herrera all just decent-ish players to compete against David Silva, Yaya Toure and Aguero? Those players was big money the type of players we would've bought under Fergie. It really wouldn't surprised me if some at the club really thought those players was enough to still beat City in the long run.
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The thing is, although Ferguson didn’t always get it right, no manager ever does, he had recently turned relatively cheap players like Evra, Vidic, Park (a combined £16.5m for all 3 FFS!!) into genuinely key performers and winners. I think it took Utd years to realise that that couldn’t keep being relied upon.
 
RedKnight88 said:
Fergie was happy spending record breaking transfers before, bet he would have done it every season if he could , but when we sold C.Ronaldo he said, nah, I am happy with Own and Valencia? Yeah, I don't think so.
I also remember many fans looking down on Robben and Sneijder as Madrid flops.
A little bit of arrogance from us with regards to City and their spending, its as if we thought we could just make a couple okay-ish signings and still be world class. Thats how I see it anyways.
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Yeah we should've been getting both Robben and Sneijder in the deal for Ronaldo.
 
It's the moment I always pinpoint as us no longer being one of Europe's elite teams. Fergie was a genius and still had us competitive but we should've had more world class players in the team whilst we were still on top. The team was left to decline from that point, which tbh was most likely the fault of the Glazers
 
pascell said:
Yeah we should've been getting both Robben and Sneijder in the deal for Ronaldo.
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Looks obvious in hindsight but Robben was very injury prone and Fergie never really played a non-goal scoring 10 in his teams. So I don't know if Sneijder was ever really a great fit for him.
 
Looking back yes an absolute disaster of a window that we let slide because of our absolute faith in Sir Alex. Valencia went on to be a very good player for us of course, but as a replacement for Ronaldo was just laughable.

The summer of 2010 was probably worse? Smalling, Chicharito, Bebe and Lindegaard, good grief. That type of window today would have us marching in the streets.
 
You signed a lot of up-and-coming players around this time - Jones, Smalling, Chicharito, etc, but not a lot of proven stars. Meanwhile, City were ready to bring in the likes of Silva, Toure, etc. Your failure to reinforce the midfield was just as insane as it has been over last few seasons. Complacency can lead to a quick drop-off. I recall Liverpool in the early 90s failing to refresh an ageing squad with sufficient quality (Jimmy Carter, an old David Speedie etc) and they quickly fell away after year's of uninterrupted success (though in Liverpool's and Dalglish's defence, the Hillsborough disaster surely played a role in this process) . Success sometimes feels as though it will continue forever, but all empires crumble eventually and teams can sleepwalk into trouble without realising it.

I've always said that the period between 2009 and 2013 was SAF's greatest achievement in management. OK, maybe the standard of the Premier League around this time wasn't absolutely top notch, but how he managed to win titles and nearly add a Champions League into the bargain, was insane, considering the holes in your squad. The subsequent Moyes reign proved what magic SAF was working for you.
 
Fortitude said:
No. The end was the Fergie handover into ruin.

With him at the helm, we were still competitive and players wanted to come here literally to play for him. All of that presence and aura left with him and we turned into a running joke within a few months.
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Correct
 
For me when mourinho was sacked in 18 seemed more like a sign that united were seriously struggling to get back to a competitive level they should be at. It was 5 and a half years later after ferguson retired and they couldnt maintain the standards the fans and club expect. I am still surprised at how they have turned out. I thought ten hag would do better too.
 
Kinda. The fact that sir Alex won two more titles in the 4 years after was testament to how great he was and how great those veterans were-Giggs, Scholes, Evra, Rio, Vidic- but the core of the team was old and the replacements were good but nowhere near the same level in quality (Smalling, Evans, Jones, Welbeck, Rafael).

I always feel bad saying this but the last two title winning teams we had were far from being vintage United. That 24 game unbeaten run in 10-11 was ridiculous and the final season had Carrick and RvP playing out of their skins. The warning signs were there.
 
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