"Replacing Ronaldo with Valencia"
- Thread starter adexkola
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You didn't have to get Messi, but there were players of greater pedigree than Valencia.
I remember at the time thinking, for whatever reason, that well if he wants to go it isn't that bad, we can just go and get Ribery and Aguero for that price. In hindsight, we could have. Instead we got Valencia and Owen. There is no positive way to spin it.
It's a strange thing to say, given that just 16 months later we made another European Cup Final, but I believe that summer set us back years, and I don't think we've truly recovered our position from it. Not on the continent anyway.
He may not have been available, but the day after we sold Ronaldo, all of the talk was that we were in for Ribery.
Also, as others have pointed out, Sneijder, Robben, van der Vaart and David Silva all moved that summer. We may not have been interested in those players, but as far as many supporters were concerned, we should been in for them or we failed to pay up to bring them here.
I think the other reason people like to talk in terms of 'replacing Ronaldo with Valencia' is that it serves as a nice illustration of the general mood around that time. We also lost Tevez that summer and didn't replace him either. Ronaldo and Tevez were two of our genuine superstar players and we lost them both at once. Having received £80mil for Ronaldo and not spent the money to make Tevez's deal permanent (I know he wanted to leave anyway), everyone thought we had a £100mil-plus 'transfer war-chest' to go out and bag ourselves two or three top talents. We ended up with one good PL winger from Wigan and Michael Owen on a free.
Also, as others have pointed out, Sneijder, Robben, van der Vaart and David Silva all moved that summer. We may not have been interested in those players, but as far as many supporters were concerned, we should been in for them or we failed to pay up to bring them here.
I think the other reason people like to talk in terms of 'replacing Ronaldo with Valencia' is that it serves as a nice illustration of the general mood around that time. We also lost Tevez that summer and didn't replace him either. Ronaldo and Tevez were two of our genuine superstar players and we lost them both at once. Having received £80mil for Ronaldo and not spent the money to make Tevez's deal permanent (I know he wanted to leave anyway), everyone thought we had a £100mil-plus 'transfer war-chest' to go out and bag ourselves two or three top talents. We ended up with one good PL winger from Wigan and Michael Owen on a free.
Yes, Kaka, Ronaldo and Benzema signed within 3 weeks of each other. I remember correctly it was Benzema 35m, Kaka 68M then Ronaldo 80M.
It was more about what that window represented, dragging Valencia in to that is hardly fair. He wasn't brought in as a direct replacement for Ronaldo so to speak but just as a winger and he has been a good player for us really good in some seasons and I wouldn't even think about selling him now, I think he should be our first choice right back.
The window represented us being told we weren't a massive player in the transfer market though, as a team could come in and grab our best player, and one of the best players ever and we couldn't stop them. Furthermore, we couldn't replace them with players of similar reputation. Owen, terrible, obertan whatever and Valencia although I would say that has been a good transfer, was a player from wigan and even at his peak was never going to contest with the absolute world class players.
The window represented us being told we weren't a massive player in the transfer market though, as a team could come in and grab our best player, and one of the best players ever and we couldn't stop them. Furthermore, we couldn't replace them with players of similar reputation. Owen, terrible, obertan whatever and Valencia although I would say that has been a good transfer, was a player from wigan and even at his peak was never going to contest with the absolute world class players.
Up to that point, I had been neutral on the Glazer issue.
After that summer, I became passionately anti Glazer.
It's also why I was on Rooney's side in 2010.
The club simply gave up competing in the transfer market.
After that summer, I became passionately anti Glazer.
It's also why I was on Rooney's side in 2010.
The club simply gave up competing in the transfer market.
Valencia nearly unstoppable? No. Valencia was a functional player. Quick, strong but it's night and day. I'd rather us got 60 Million and Robben then what happened. (Though I think Ronaldo should have gone for 100m)
It's easy to say that Valencia was Unstoppable but the fact is the drop in creativity, imagination and goals was great....Valencias biggest problem mostly - has been his attitude in the final third. In the last game, we saw him cross the ball properly and he would have been a far better winger if he had varied his game more.
We were fortunate to win the league that year given our woeful away form.
A potential, realistic line-up in 09/10 could have been:
VDS
Rafael
Rio
Vidic
Evra
Carrick
Fletcher
Robben
Sneijder
Nani
Rooney
Instead we had Valencia and Park in place of Robben and Sneijder - good, solid players no doubt, and I'm fond of both of them. But not enough to keep us competitive with Barca, which should have been the immediate aim after defeat in Rome.
VDS
Rafael
Rio
Vidic
Evra
Carrick
Fletcher
Robben
Sneijder
Nani
Rooney
Instead we had Valencia and Park in place of Robben and Sneijder - good, solid players no doubt, and I'm fond of both of them. But not enough to keep us competitive with Barca, which should have been the immediate aim after defeat in Rome.
I agree. Our decline started that summer imo.
Pogba is one of the top 10 (maybe top 5) midfielders in the world but Juventus are not going to be significantly weaker after selling him because they are reinvesting in Higuain, Pjanic, Pjaca, Benatia etc.
It was possible to sell Ronaldo and not have a worse team. We just had to buy well. We didn't. Hence why people complain about the transfers that summer.
I honestly don't think that Ribery and Robben were many shades above what Valencia offered at his best. And for all the muppetry over them they've won only one CL and multiple Bundesliga titles in a, um, less competitive league. And why is Van der Vaart and Sneidjer being mentioned???
Fair enough on Owen. Hard to see the logic there. We did win a league with him
We started losing ground on Barca and Real that summer and we've not recovered.
May 2009, there was nothing between Man Utd, Real and Barca in terms of quality. You can argue Barca were just ahead but it was t by much imo.
May 2009, there was nothing between Man Utd, Real and Barca in terms of quality. You can argue Barca were just ahead but it was t by much imo.
Between the years 2008 and 2013, Manchester United Football Club did not buy a single central midfielder.
Threads like this just remind me where this club went wrong in the last few Fergie years.
Threads like this just remind me where this club went wrong in the last few Fergie years.
Real were way behind. They were the Arsenal of the CL before Arsenal. Won a few leagues in a very weak La Liga. They were not at elite levels until 2012.
I don't understand why people sell our team of those years short, we were a top 5 team in Europe for a few years after Ronaldo left.
Valencia was a great signing. But we needed more though to go with that signing.
I think the last couple of years of Valencia, where he has morphed into a strange style of stopping dead, and wellying in crosses with almost zero thought has clouded people's minds completely.
Early United Valencia was super efficiency, always picking the right option, strong, quick, loads of assists, the perfect foil to the more wasteful version of Nani, who had way more flair, but usually did the wrong thing
It's a hindsight thing moaning about the perceived Ronaldo to Valencia swapover. Ronaldo wasn't even playing as an out and out right winger near the end for us.
We still came 2nd and did well in Europe, for such a bad switch!
And we were unfortunate that Rooney got injured in 09/10 and to lose it on goal difference in 11/12.
Actually our giggys was the main creator Valencia was tired with nani also Fletcher had a beast of a season.
Certainly a massive drop off from Ronaldo, I do like Valencia but not replacing a ballon d'or winner capable of scoring and creating goals with a world class player was a mistake.
He signed Valencia but could well of brought in another creative/goal scoring player alongside to help fill the huge void
Yes, we were a top 5 team. But the gap between us and the top two grew and grew. At the same time Bayern began to build.
I've thought long and hard for 3 minutes.I think you should have picked a better title
I can't think of anything better
Ronaldo and Tevez replaced with Valencia and Owen. Start of the decline really
Also I see the word decline being mentioned a lot here. The entire history of Manchester United after SAF took the helm has been how he's managed and produced several excellent teams (3 if I'm counting correctly). Implicit in that fact is the point that between those teams, the club was in some sort of state that could be categorized as a decline. And that's just what happens as players grow old and their replacements are still immature/flop.
The Glazers had it too easy for too long with SAF virtually guaranteeing a title on alternate years regardless of squad condition/investment. Now they're literally throwing away money because there is no SAF to bail them out anymore. Had they backed SAF like they've done to others in the last 3 years, we not only would have had a better squad (Hazard, Moura.......) but we also would have fared much better in Europe in all those years.the summer of 'no value' and Fergie guarding the Glazers money like it was his own.....
with hindsight in some ways it was a time that Fergie gave up competing with the very best in Europe - that we got to the final again in 2010 was a super achievement but we couldn't compete with the best
I remember the Guardian were convinced we were signing Ribery for 68 million and I thought that was insane given he's half the player Ronaldo is....
at the same time we could have bought Robben and Sneijder for a combined fee of about 40.....
Ronaldo was only half the story - we replaced Tevez with Owen as well
Instead they wanted to squeeze out as much as possible while making SAF to come out with utter bollocks like 'there is no value in the market'.
A decline that saw us still win the league?
We would have probably won 4-5 titles in a row if we had invested that summer. Maybe more
Chelsea won the league
History has shown the transfer strategy in Fergie's last few years to have been a false economy. We are now having to pay through our noses to rectify the lack of investment.
Exactly this.
I think Nani was a big factor in Fergie's thinking. The talent was there and if had become the player we had hoped for, it would have made a big difference. He was more of a Ronaldo replacement than Valencia, bringing us the unexpected.
It's the equivalent of replacing Keane with Carrick. You can't get a like for like one man match-winner so you sign an effective team player and hope that someone who plays a different position will develop into the match-winner instead.
Valencia's been a reliable and important player since Ronaldo left but we've been relying on Rooney to win matches. A burden he's generally shouldered well enough but the failure of players like Nani and Anderson to develop as expected (along with Rooney's feet of clay and the Tevez/Berbatov fiasco) meant we were a much poorer team, post-Ronaldo, than Fergie hoped . Blaming Valencia for this is missing the point.
Valencia's been a reliable and important player since Ronaldo left but we've been relying on Rooney to win matches. A burden he's generally shouldered well enough but the failure of players like Nani and Anderson to develop as expected (along with Rooney's feet of clay and the Tevez/Berbatov fiasco) meant we were a much poorer team, post-Ronaldo, than Fergie hoped . Blaming Valencia for this is missing the point.
I find this particularly annoying - when are we going to have a chance of 4 in a row again? Not any time soon.
There were many times where we lost ground with a poor summer window long before 2009 only for Fergie to rectify it all a year later by signing big names. But with Man City and Chelsea happy to outbid us for any player back then then I think Fergie fancied giving the likes of Nani, Welbeck etc a chance to establish themselves in the first team. Ravel Morrison was still highly thought by Fergie then too as he starred in the youth ranks. Obertan looked like a world beater in youth games before we snapped him up. There was still a lot of leaders and serial winners in that team so Fergie was right to take a punt on bargain basement players and youth prospects. The problem from that window onwards was that we were only the 3rd most attractive team in England in terms of salary on offer and probably 6th in Europe in terms of salary on offer to attract stars and we were not even the most attractive club for talented kids to join in Manchester anymore. Emergence of PSG a year or two later pushed us even further down the list of salaries that clubs can offer. So it became far harder for Fergie to sign a new Keane or Van Nistelrooy or Stam to take team to next level. Thankfully we can offer as good as anyone again but we've been in freefall since 2013 due to poor choices of managers and no other reason. Hopefully Jose will change that
I don't think anyone is blaming Valencia. But we'd money and as already mentioned by others that there were players available with far better pedigree and hence Valencia shouldn't have been our "marquee" signing!
He didn't have 3-4 great seasons.
He had 1 and a half decent seasons, and then done nothing but been workman like and uninspiring since.
I should remind people that both Sneijder and Robben left Real very late that summer, late August. So it would probably not have been possible to plan ahead like we did with Valencia, who was signed shortly after Ronaldo left.
Should we have made a move when it became clear Real wanted rid? Maybe, but Fergie wasn't much like that by then.
Should we have made a move when it became clear Real wanted rid? Maybe, but Fergie wasn't much like that by then.
To be fair, I don't think people make that statement as a criticism of Tony.
5 headers.
People seem to randomly attribute the 4 assists that Rooney converted from Nani with his head to Valencia that season as well,
If Rooney, Nani and Anderson had all become as good as Fergie thought they would, then there was no need for a "marquee" signing and Valencia would have been exactly what we needed. The fact we ended up lacking in star quality wasn't Valencia's fault, nor did it make him a bad signing.