Midfield poor recruitment - Top 25 transfers

[UnitedFire]

We really have struggled to find the true midfield gems. Plenty will argue Carrick wasn't elite as well, but he did make us Elite as a team so I think just about makes that.

Fernandes has been Elite, but slipping at the moment. There have been a few midfielders in the good but not quite there category. Pogba I have in here as moments of Elite, but often poor.

It's no wonder we've not achieved everything we might have done when this vital area has been so badly recruited.

Of the below
Elite for us
Carrick, Keane
World class
Fernandes, Park
Good
Paborsky
Good, but arguably not good enough
Matic, Herrera, Anderson, Mata, Veron, Pogba, Smith
Not good enough
Fred, Mkhi, Fellaini
Too soon to tell
VdB

Not worthy of note
The rest

#	player	Age	Nat.	Season	Alter Verein	Fee
1	Paul Pogba Central Midfield	23		16/17	£94.50m
2	Bruno Fernandes Attacking Midfield	25	19/20	£56.70m
3	Fred Central Midfield	25	18/19	£53.10m
4	Juan Mata Attacking Midfield	25	13/14	£40.26m
5	Nemanja Matic Defensive Midfield	28		17/18	£40.23m
6	Juan Sebastián Verón Central Midfield	26	01/02	£38.34m
7	Henrikh Mkhitaryan Attacking Midfield	27	16/17	£37.80m
8	Donny van de Beek Central Midfield	23	20/21	£35.10m
9	Ander Herrera Central Midfield	24	14/15	£32.40m
10	Morgan Schneiderlin Defensive Midfield	25	15/16	£31.50m
11	Marouane Fellaini Central Midfield	25		13/14	£29.16m
12	Anderson Central Midfield	19	07/08	£28.35m
13	Michael Carrick Defensive Midfield	25	06/07	£24.48m
14	Owen Hargreaves Defensive Midfield	26		07/08	£22.50m
15	Shinji Kagawa Attacking Midfield	23	12/13	£14.40m
16	Bastian Schweinsteiger Central Midfield	30	15/16	£8.10m
17	Alan Smith Central Midfield	23	04/05	£8.10m
18	Kléberson Central Midfield	24	03/04	£7.74m
19	Roy Keane Defensive Midfield	21	93/94	£7.65m
20	Nick Powell Attacking Midfield	18	12/13	£6.75m
21	Ji-sung Park Attacking Midfield	24	05/06	£6.57m
22	Jesper Blomqvist Left Midfield	24	98/99	£6.30m
23	Eric Djemba Djemba Defensive Midfield	22		03/04	£4.05m
24	Gabriel Obertan Attacking Midfield	20		09/10	£3.60m
25	Karel Poborsky Right Midfield	24	96/97	£3.60m

 

[paulscholes18]

I would put Park in good, had one great purple patch in late 2010 then went to the Asia cup and when he came back went back to just being decent.

 

[Chief123]

Park was a better and more important player than Pogba by a country mile.

 

[Gopher Brown]

Poborsky wasn’t good if Matic and Pogba aren’t.

Also, why include him if you don’t include Hargreaves in your ranking?

 

[OmarUnited4ever]

Fernandes is no where near WC, being WC implies consistency, which Fernandes lacks, and his ability is at best questionable and at worst not good enough for a team aspiring to win trophies

 

[OmarUnited4ever]

Poborsky & Park are wingers/wide midfielders, not CM/DM/AM type, same goes for Obertan

 

[UnitedFire]

Poborsky wasn’t good if Matic and Pogba aren’t.

Also, why include him if you don’t include Hargreaves in your ranking?

Might be a complete bias, but as a kid in school he happened to be one of my favourite players. I probably focused more on moments than overall form back then.

Matic is good, but had some poor seasons and I can barely remember a season where its been good but his legs have gone.

Pogba cost a fortune so relative judgement and his consistency and overall effort knock him well down for me.

 

[UnitedFire]

Poborsky & Park are wingers/wide midfielders, not CM/DM/AM type, same goes for Obertan

Agreed, I just selected midfielder category on transfer market. They probably were counted as wide midfielders back then. You'll remember championship manager and the forward attacking arrows. Lots of tracking back required in a 4-4-2

 

[Sassy Colin]

 

[Zen86]

Our averseness to buying proper midfielders was a running joke in the latter parts of Fergies reign.

 

[MrMarcello]

Smith was brought in to be a backup striker and was later pushed into midfield.

Veron's transfer at the time was ~£28M and today his type of class would cost £100M+.

 

[Skills]

We just haven't signed enough of them tbh. This is a position in modern football where most teams start 3 players, and maybe even a 4th one out wide.

In my opinion, once you're at the top you probably need to add a midfielder every summer in some form.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

Smith was brought in to be a backup striker and was later pushed into midfield.

Veron's transfer at the time was ~£28M and today his type of class would cost £100M+.

Yeah Veron is a tricky one. A monster when we signed him. We didn't need him, probably didn't play in a style that suited him and while he was never bad for us in the way we've seen players be bad for us since Fergie left, not being able to displace Keane or Scholes seemed to have an impact on him.

 

[::sonny::]

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[Son]

Fernandes is no where near WC, being WC implies consistency, which Fernandes lacks, and his ability is at best questionable and at worst not good enough for a team aspiring to win trophies

Disagree his output over a full season is impressive. It’s just the style of play which is hit and miss.

Could say the same about Zidane too not been consistent for Real Madrid in the league most years. They try hard stuff and a lot of the time it just doesn’t come off. Madrid fans started booing Zidane at one point.

 

[Blood Mage]

Midfield will forever be the ultimate blindspot for this club. We're getting increasingly bad at signing defenders too.

 

[MadDogg]

Fred has been better than at least half of the players you put in the ' Good, but arguably not good enough' category.

 

[Rood]

Poborsky? Was a complete transfer failure (not a bad player though as he showed after leaving)

I would say Herrera, Mata, Matic, Fred and even Fellaini were all 'Good' and certainly not on par with the likes of Pogba or Veron who are massives failures given the expectations of their huge fees

 

[OmarUnited4ever]

Disagree his output over a full season is impressive. It’s just the style of play which is hit and miss.

Could say the same about Zidane too not been consistent for Real Madrid in the league most years. They try hard stuff and a lot of the time it just doesn’t come off. Madrid fans started booing Zidane at one point.

Nope, Zidane was consistent, but RM had shit defense and no DM (once Makalele left, they were too exposed in the middle of the park, it was Gutti & Beckham who played as DMs!), but Zidane was consistently good, and dragged that RM team to many wins, I used to watch them and they booed everyone, not only Zindane.

I do not mind Fernandes' risk taking style, you see that with others like KdB, but Fernandes has games where not only he us ineffectual as a #10, he is also a liability at times with his constant misplaced passes, and sometimes his overall play is terrible, he has been terrible this season and had a lot of bad games last year and is yet to perform in a big match, his numbers were impressive last season, which basically made him look better, but this year, his output halfed in the PL compared to last season, which shows that he is really an inconsistent player, hence, not a WC player.

 

[RedRonaldo]

We did try though. I mean, who would have thought Pogba would be a bad signing, he was at one point the most wanted worldclass midfield talent in the world.

Schneiderlin was also highly rated in the league before we sign him. He was like Rice level of midfielder at that time, or even better. I remember back then everyone was raving about him at Southampton, we all wanted him here and thought he was exactly what we needed in midfield. Who knows he would end up that badly.

Schneiderlin at 25, Southampton:
7.51 avg rating
3.7 tackle
2.1 interception
61 pass/89% rate

Rice at 23, West Ham:
7.07 avg rating
2.1 tackle
1.7 interception
57 pass/91% rate

 

[JeffFromHK]

Considering how bad our midfield have been over the years, it is so blasphemous that elite midfielders like Thiago, Kroos and Fabinho all once said "yes" to Man Utd at a certain point of time, only that Moyes, Van Gaal and Mourinho were foolish enough to reject them joining us.

 

[kafta]

What a bargain Park was. Overall that list is atrocious, Fergie neglected that area but backed it up with winning everything.

This summer we have to finally sort that area out

 

[Bestietom]

If we need a player that will give you 110% every game and cover every blade of grass on the pitch each game it's Konrad Laimer. He can also tackle and pass and will help out in defence and attack.

 

[Tavern in the town]

Disagree his output over a full season is impressive. It’s just the style of play which is hit and miss.

Could say the same about Zidane too not been consistent for Real Madrid in the league most years. They try hard stuff and a lot of the time it just doesn’t come off. Madrid fans started booing Zidane at one point.

That’s because Zidane is one of the most overrated footballers of all time and if he was around today he’d be viewed a lot differently. Someone like De Bruyne would be seen as levels above him.

 

[Sparky Rhiwabon]

Carrick was definitely elite for us over his United career. I wasn’t that excited when he signed but he grew over his time here and was a great signing.

 

[Sparky Rhiwabon]

I think Matic was a decent signing (“good” in your categories). We bought him at the tail end of his career but that was reflected in the price, he was world class in his prime.

 

[Real Name]

Still cant believe how Veron didnt work out.

And what about Schneiderlin. It was such a disaster of a transfer or turned to be.

 

[Giant Midget]

Still cant believe how Veron didnt work out.

And what about Schneiderlin. It was such a disaster of a transfer or turned to be.

I’ll hold my hands up with Schneiderlin, he was my ideal signing during that time. His stats were insane at Southampton and I thought we’d finally got our main midfielder for the next 5 years.

He was horrible and had basically no real footballing ability, unreal how clueless I was

 

[DevilRed]

Djemba Djemba. So good they named him twice.

 

[Real Name]

I’ll hold my hands up with Schneiderlin, he was my ideal signing during that time. His stats were insane at Southampton and I thought we’d finally got our main midfielder for the next 5 years.

He was horrible and had basically no real footballing ability, unreal how clueless I was

You're not the same, he looked really good at Southampton and I was excited as hell when him and Schweini came.