"Replacing Ronaldo with Valencia"

[Pogue Mahone]

To be fair, I don't think people make that statement as a criticism of Tony.

There's a few in this thread who seem to think we should never have signed him.

 

[facund]

Valencia was a good signing if looked at in isolation. Was he a good replacement for Ronaldo? Well no, we replaced a dynamic player proficient in a wide variety of skills with a one footed speed merchant who played to an extremely set pattern. Our horizons, in an expressive footballing sense, drastically shrunk with that swap but none of that can be blamed on Valencia who performed admirably for the first couple of years (better than I ever would have imagined).

Our football became increasingly functional from around that time to Fergie's retirement.

 

[Offside]

The summer of 2009 will live long in the memory for me. That was peak Glazernomics. I can't remember a more depressing transfer window.

2010 was worse.

 

[ReDDHDevilS]

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.

Should we be relying on ifs and buts when we're the 2nd best team in the world, had 80m to spend and also had better players than Valencia available?

Why should we be settling for the 2nd best when we'd the chance to get the best?

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Should we be relying on ifs and buts when we're the 2nd best team in the world, had 80m to spend and also had better players than Valencia available?

Why should we be settling for the 2nd best when we'd the chance to get the best?

Because Fergie made a career out of building great teams from "ifs and buts". Including the player we bought Valencia to replace.

 

[RedRover]

I see this remark all the time. What was wrong with the transfer?

Ronaldo was dead set on leaving. Fergie didn't find a like-for-like transfer (only person which would have been an equal at least was Messi), but Valencia was a great replacement. He's in the sunset of his career with that but why is there collective amnesia over the 3-4 great seasons he had with us? I recall Guardiola calling him the best winger in the world before the Rome final, which was slight hyperbole probably, but I don't recall many wingers at the time being more effective. Robben had an Indian summer but still...

I'm reluctant to dismiss such remarks as sheer muppetry and say "if Valencia was Valencinho...", so what gives here? Who should SAF have bought instead that would have done a better job during that period where Valencia was nearly-unstoppable?

The fairly obvious issue is that however good a season he had, if you sell superstars, bank the money and sign players umpteen notches below then you're likely to head one way.

Valencia was a decent signing to be fair to him, but the failure to invest in quality to replace Ronaldo's productivity was always going to get fans upset. Especially when sitting on a record transfer fee.

 

[Robertd0803]

The summer of 2009 will live long in the memory for me. That was peak Glazernomics. I can't remember a more depressing transfer window.

2013-missing out on everyone and nearly missing out on Fellaini as well, and overpaying for him as well.

2009 was almost as bad though-we really lost out there.

 

[ReDDHDevilS]

Because Fergie made a career out of building great teams from "ifs and buts". Including the player we bought Valencia to replace.

Let's not kid ourselves, it wasn't SAF's decision! SAF would never settle for the 2nd best. We all know the real reason behind this which carried on until SAF retired.

 

[Raoul]

This reminds me a bit of when Christie Brinkley divorced Billy Joel. The key moment came when she remembered she was Christie Brinkley and that she was married to Billy Joel.

 

[Adisa]

2010 was worse.

2010 was just Hernandez so you can argue it's worse in terms of incomings. But one has to calculate that we lost Ronaldo and Tevez in 2009.
If we take the window as a whole, 2009 was far worse.

 

[TheRedDevil'sAdvocate]

Valencia gave us two very good seasons, one was his first with the club in 09/10 (5 goals 9 assists in the PL) and the other was two years later (4 goals and 13 assists). It's no coincidence that Rooney's best goal scoring seasons for the club were exactly the same since Antonio crossing the ball to Rooney who was attempting a late run towards the far post was a very well drilled move for us. And we still had Giggs (or Nani) on the other flank. We had no problem retaining our status in the PL because Ferguson knew what he needed to keep us on top in England.

I think the final in Rome really changed Ferguson's perspective. He himself had admitted in the early 00's that we should be doing better in Europe but he was never the type of manager who would drastically change his tactics just in Europe. He tried to fit his ideas about how football should be played to the more defensive minded tactics of the 00s. The pinnacle of that effort was the 07/08 & the 08/09 side. In Moscow we won the CL because we were the best team in the world at the time, in terms of the football tactics of that period we were as good as it gets. Barcelona's absolute dominance a year later in Rome came as a shock (we could have conceded 4 or 5 goals in that one). I still remember Giggs and Fergie in the post match interview looking dumbfounded by their performance.

I still believe that this game led Ferguson to revert to his old and more preferred tactics, a more "classic" 4411. A return to the basics, if you like and a change from a more continental style of football to a more British one. Valencia came to United at a time when out and out wingers at top level were basically becoming extinct in the football world. That doesn't make him a bad player at all. But in my eyes it was decisions like these that didn't allow us to really improve on our 2009 side. You can always argue that we played one more CL final but the truth is that, in this version of the European Cup, only Real Madrid last season had an easier route to the final than us. Of course it wasn't only Valencia's signing, throughout the post 2009 years we also had Owen, Young, Jones, Scholes coming back from retirement, the faith that Fletcher would become the player he once was, absurd trust in Cleverley and Anderson and Nani never reaching his full potential...

The big difference was the Fergie knew the PL like the back of his palm and could win it with lesser teams. The managers that followed though would have surely had an easier job, had we managed to retain our quality and intelligence on the pitch after the 2009 CL final.

 

[2cents]

In summers 2009 and 2010, Zlatan, Benzema, Alonso, Robben, Sneijder, Silva, Toure, Di Maria, Ozil, and Khedira all moved clubs (Aguero joined City in 2011) - with the exception of Alonso, all of them might have been feasible targets for us if we'd been bothered, all of them would have strengthened us in areas where we needed it, and all of them ended up strengthening our domestic and European rivals instead.

At the same time, we had £80m to play with (apparently), and we signed - Valencia, Obertan, Owen, Smalling, Chicharito, and Bebe.

 

[davidmichael]

Valencia was playing for Wigan when we signed him and with all respect for Wigan they're not the team I'd be looking at when looking for a replacement for the best player in the world at that time, squad player definitely but to replace Ronaldo at the peak of his powers as a winger definitely not.

What we should have done was say to Real we want £80 million AND Robben for Ronaldo and seeing as Robben was on the way out I honestly think Real would have accepted that, at that point in time I think only Ronaldo was a better winger in the world so we'd have got a world class replacement and £80 million cash instead of Valencia and Obertan.

 

[Revan]

He was a very good player, but we should have signed a superstar that season to 'replace' Ronaldo (even if it was on some other position).

Sneijder and Robben left Madrid, both David Silva and David Villa were available, Kun Aguero had just had a brilliant season and being labelled as the next big thing and so on. We were linked with many of them, but in the end we went for a decent but neither spectacular, nor world class solution.

We also lost Tevez last season, and we replaced him with Owen to make the transfer window even more tragic. If we got Robben and Sneijder instead (very doable), I think that we would have won an another UCL.

 

[Keeps It tidy]

There is very few wingers I would have over Valencia from 09-12. He was just fantastic those first 3 seasons. He was not able to replace Ronaldo but, literally no one would have replaced Ronaldo effectively.

 

[harms]

Valencia is a great servant to the club and he certainly was a good transfer for his value (would've been great if we somehow sold him after his purple patch though). But he is and always was one-dimensional, even though he was pretty much unplayable at the domestic level at some point - and we just sold one of the two best players in the world (it was still a question at that time who was better between the two, not like today). And it was the summer when we could've snatched Robben!

I always thought that Nani would've been Ronaldo's replacement and he started to show good form at the same time as Valencia did, but what do you know...

And we needed strengthening in other positions, especially at midfield and we all expected for at least some of the Ronaldo's transfer sum to be reinvested

 

[criticalanalysis]

Valencia gave us two very good seasons, one was his first with the club in 09/10 (5 goals 9 assists in the PL) and the other was two years later (4 goals and 13 assists). It's no coincidence that Rooney's best goal scoring seasons for the club were exactly the same since Antonio crossing the ball to Rooney who was attempting a late run towards the far post was a very well drilled move for us. And we still had Giggs (or Nani) on the other flank. We had no problem retaining our status in the PL because Ferguson knew what he needed to keep us on top in England.

I think the final in Rome really changed Ferguson's perspective. He himself had admitted in the early 00's that we should be doing better in Europe but he was never the type of manager who would drastically change his tactics just in Europe. He tried to fit his ideas about how football should be played to the more defensive minded tactics of the 00s. The pinnacle of that effort was the 07/08 & the 08/09 side. In Moscow we won the CL because we were the best team in the world at the time, in terms of the football tactics of that period we were as good as it gets. Barcelona's absolute dominance a year later in Rome came as a shock (we could have conceded 4 or 5 goals in that one). I still remember Giggs and Fergie in the post match interview looking dumbfounded by their performance.

I still believe that this game led Ferguson to revert to his old and more preferred tactics, a more "classic" 4411. A return to the basics, if you like and a change from a more continental style of football to a more British one. Valencia came to United at a time when out and out wingers at top level were basically becoming extinct in the football world. That doesn't make him a bad player at all. But in my eyes it was decisions like these that didn't allow us to really improve on our 2009 side. You can always argue that we played one more CL final but the truth is that, in this version of the European Cup, only Real Madrid last season had an easier route to the final than us. Of course it wasn't only Valencia's signing, throughout the post 2009 years we also had Owen, Young, Jones, Scholes coming back from retirement, the faith that Fletcher would become the player he once was, absurd trust in Cleverley and Anderson and Nani never reaching his full potential...

The big difference was the Fergie knew the PL like the back of his palm and could win it with lesser teams. The managers that followed though would have surely had an easier job, had we managed to retain our quality and intelligence on the pitch after the 2009 CL final.

Good post.

 

[Jaybomb]

Valencia was a good traditional winger. A bit like Kanchelskis. It was the fact that we lost the best player in the world and didn't bother spending the 80m on a world class player. Maybe Ferguson thought Nani was gonna be the next Ronaldo. Although Nani was great for us, he could never live up to "the new Ronaldo" hype. That was asking too much.

 

[Bojan11]

Lets see.

Villa, Aguero, Robben and Silva were all available.

We didn't need to replace Ronaldo like for like. But losing players like Ronaldo and Tevez without signing any real star players cost us a champions league and league. When Rooney got injured that year, we had nobody to step up.

 

[united_99]

Aguero and Silva yes as RM and Barca were not really interested, but Villa was always going to one of those two.
Whole Europe including RM and Barca was chasing him since 2008 and only in 2010 he finally left.

 

[shamans]

How is this even a thread? We were replacing arguably our greatest player with a "good" player.

 

[Sean_RedDevil]

Lets see.

Villa, Aguero, Robben and Silva were all available.

We didn't need to replace Ronaldo like for like. But losing players like Ronaldo and Tevez without signing any real star players cost us a champions league and league. When Rooney got injured that year, we had nobody to step up.

This

 

[RC89]

At his best Valencia was close to unstoppable. His game was very limited but what he was able to do, he was incredibly efficient at.

 

[ricky-romeo]

signing valencia was a good business. but owen and obertan obviously didn't help us considering we've just lost ronaldo and tevez. still think sir alex could have asked for at least one of sneijder or robben from real at that time.

----------------------van der sar--------------------------
rafael-----------rio--------------------vidic--------------evra
---------------carrick----------scholes---------------------
valencia--------------Sneijder--------------------robben/nani
------------------------rooney--------------------------------

 

[Wittmann45]

Aguero and Silva yes as RM and Barca were not really interested, but Villa was always going to one of those two.
Whole Europe including RM and Barca was chasing him since 2008 and only in 2010 he finally left.

Silva had a chance to come to United the year before and rejected the club. Fergie rarely gave second chances to players, no?

Let's not kid ourselves, it wasn't SAF's decision! SAF would never settle for the 2nd best. We all know the real reason behind this which carried on until SAF retired.

But that is exactly Pogue's point. He has settled for 2nd best constantly and found a way to make it work. He missed out on Shearer twice and settled for Cantona the first time around, and Ole and Sheringham the second. He missed out on Ronaldinho and settled for Ronaldo, missed out on Kluivert and settled for Yorke and Cole, missed out on Blanc and settled for Johnsen, and then signed Blanc on a free transfer after selling the best center back in the world, replaced Schmeichel with a pile of different players before finding a gem in Van Der Sar. People asked "where will the goals come from?" when Ruud left and wasn't replaced by anyone, but he knew the whole time. He took flyers on players all the time after selling important figures at the club. Just because those players worked out so often doesn't mean they weren't 2nd choice. Batistuta was wanted by Fergie, not so much by Martin Edwards, and then they signed Ruud instead. This happened before the Glazers, although it happened much more often after them. Carrick, Evra, Vidic, etc; were any of these players Fergie's first choice? The 2006-07 season is now seen as a renaissance for Fergie and United, but was that summer transfer window any more popular than 2010 at the time? The team lost its greatest captain and one of its greatest goal scorers and brought in only Michael Carrick, who many of the fans were less than happy with. I know the economics of the club at the time had an effect, but Sir Alex's stubbornness also meant he missed out on targets. He refused to acquiesce to agent's demands for Gascoigne, just like he would later with players like Hazard and Lucas Moura.

Signing Sneijder would have threatened the position of his record signing. Maybe he thought that Ronaldo leaving could have a positive effect on Rooney, which it did, who could actually play as a forward instead of rightly sacrificing for Ronaldo's benefit. Maybe he thought Berbatov would have benefited much like Ronaldo did when the main focal point of the attack, Ruud, was left out of the team throughout the 2005-06 season and then subsequently sold.

 

[RooneyLegend]

We were easily turned over by Barca in that final, and then we were losing our best player. Instead of compensating for that by breaking up the money, and signing more quality players where the squad needed reinvestment. We went out and signed Valencia, Obertan and Owen.

Valencia was a good player for some time, however he was nowhere near world class. He was never a consistent difference maker and didn't have the potential to even be that.

When Barca made Bayern look like a second rate club, what they did is hire a new coach, and then made big signings Robben and Gomez in their efforts to catch up. Every summer from then they pretty much started mend their team by improving the week spots. We behaved like our team was complete without any space for improvements.

Ditto Madrid, they went out and signed Ronaldo, Benzema and Kaka. Proper signals of intent.

Lots of quality players were being moved around in that time. I'm never going to be convinced that we were better than we'd have been had we signed Sneijder, Robben and Aguero during the summer we lost Ronaldo and Tevez. Them in a team with Rooney would have possibly even made us better.

Put it like this, I'd have given us a significantly improved chance of beating barca in '11 with this side

----Aguero----Rooney-----Robben-----
----------Sneijder---Modric---------------
------------------Carrick---------------------

Then I ever did with this side:
--------------Hernandez---------------
-----Park------Rooney-------Valencia
------------Giggs----Carrick-----------

Sir Alex wasn't all that aggressive in the market cause he believed that Anderson was going to replace Scholes, and Nani was going to be adequate replacement for Giggs. That didn't prove to be the case. He also didn't want to give up on Berbatov despite the obvious harm he'd caused to our aggressive counter attacking play. He gave these players all the time in the world and we suffered for it.

Its no surprise that Bayern, Madrid and Barca have been such behemoths in recent years as you can see by their behavior in the market, that they actively look to improve season up season to maintain their elite status. We didn't, and we've gone backwards dramatically from that time.

 

[AgentP]

I don't think Valencia was nearly unstoppable, but he was pretty good.

And I don't think people have a problem with the purchase of Valencia. I certainly don't.

More so the fact that the summer as a whole was a wasted opportunity. When you consider the funds we had from Ronaldo and leverage to get a Madrid cast off.

Our business was Valencia(good buy), Owen(eh), Obertan(eh). Lost a world class player and a good player in Tevez(albeit his last season for us is overrated).

We didn't do enough and in the process lost a chance at another CL final visit and another Prem title.

Ronaldo leaving was inevitable. But letting Tevez go that season was a mistake. Fergie preferred Berbatov over Tevez but we could have still kept him. He also wanted to stay. Maybe Fergie didn't expect him to up his game like he did. We would have probably won the league if we had kept him.

 

[Gazza]

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.

I agree, Nani and also Berbatov too. Even now, a front four of Nani/Berbatov/Rooney/Valencia looks pretty good on paper, with Carrick and Fletcher backing it up, but the players involved either had injuries or didn't reach their potential or fit the team. It was a difficult transition and buying another proven star would have helped but sometimes it just doesn't turn out the way you'd hoped.

 

[Kag]

Valencia was a good signing and nothing close to the problem at the time. If we could sign the same player again right now then I'd be all for it.

The money we were stumping up in the form of interest payments was disgusting and Ferguson managed that period phenomenally well on the field. That said, good players that we could afford were on the market at the time and, for whatever reason, we didn't pursue them. 2009 was the beginning of a serious decline in our playing staff and we've been paying an even bigger price since.

I don't think this is hindsight speaking either. Nobody was happy with that summer, not even then.

 

[devilish]

Valencia was one of the many 'value' signings ie safe signings (usually EPL proven) who usually had far less talent from the players we already had and who came without agent fees attached. There was no chance in hell that the likes of Valencia, Young, Jones, Owen and co had enough talent to replace those who they were meant to replace. Occasionally we would spend big on a top player but there again, it would be a cautious transfer for a player that is EPL proven (ex Berbatov or RVP) and of a certain age. The old man was becoming more cautious, preferring to rely on the old guard and local talent which apart from a few players such as Smalling had disappointing big time. Its a shame because when he did broke the value rule (ex DDG) we did so well.

Its ironic because those 80m we gained for Ronaldo will probably be used to get Pogba back a kid which left the club because of SAF's cautious approach

 

[rollingstoned1]

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.

This +10000. I wanted to make the Keane-Carrick point that people seem to have missed throught this thread that in order to push a certain narrative of under-investment they're considering Valencia to have been some sort of direct replacement for Ronaldo when he patently wasn't. We were monitoring him for a time and he was a very good signing who until 2012 was probably world class but people scarcely seem to remember this after his last 3 seasons that is reminscent of the Space Jam movie. They need only watch some of the videos at the time to know how good he was, particularly how he destroyed Cole in the title decider in 2011. Being predictable and obscenely one-footed didn't stop him from being a wrecking ball on that right flank.

 

[Shiva87]

Valencia's acquisition in isolation isn't the problem. Valencia has been great for the club, had some brilliant performances and has adapted himself to become a very good utility right sided player. The fact that a defensive minded manager like Mourinho doesn't feel a need to buy a RB with Darmian and Valencia in the squad is a big testament to his abilities even now.

The problem that 'replacing Ronaldo with Valencia' phrase reflects is the big loss of 'star power' in the side with the Ronaldo transfer. To be honest, we don't seem to have replaced that properly yet. If the Zlatan transfer (or proposed Pogba transfer) turns out well, we may well have, but we have failed with so many of these over the last 2-3 years that its hard to tell right now (Di Maria, Falcao, Schweinsteiger). The current squad with Martial, Rashford, Miki, and Zlatan is the closest we've got to an attacking quartet that can get you off your seats after the Ronaldo-Rooney-Tevez-Berbatov collection.

 

[Big Andy]

The thing that annoys me about Valencia is that after about 10 years in England, he still doesn't speak English well enough to do interviews...

 

[Raees]

I see this remark all the time. What was wrong with the transfer?

Ronaldo was dead set on leaving. Fergie didn't find a like-for-like transfer (only person which would have been an equal at least was Messi), but Valencia was a great replacement. He's in the sunset of his career with that but why is there collective amnesia over the 3-4 great seasons he had with us? I recall Guardiola calling him the best winger in the world before the Rome final, which was slight hyperbole probably, but I don't recall many wingers at the time being more effective. Robben had an Indian summer but still...

I'm reluctant to dismiss such remarks as sheer muppetry and say "if Valencia was Valencinho...", so what gives here? Who should SAF have bought instead that would have done a better job during that period where Valencia was nearly-unstoppable?

Because we could have got Robben instead. Valencia was not in the same league and for me he was too one dimensional a replacement for a guy like Ronaldo.

 

[Segment]

The summer of 2009 will live long in the memory for me. That was peak Glazernomics. I can't remember a more depressing transfer window.

For me the peak was 2010. That summer was dire. The whole 2009/10 season was uber depressing man, how the lack of investment or intent led to Rooney putting in the request in the following season.

 

[Segment]

surely this

Although that window was bad, at least we were after the likes of Cesc/Thiago

 

[Adam-Utd]

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

Imagine if we really went for it that year, got Robben and Sneijder for 40 and Ribery for 60. Those 3 at that time would have made a massive difference.

 

[JohnnyKills]

The summer of 2009 will live long in the memory for me. That was peak Glazernomics. I can't remember a more depressing transfer window.

Agree completely. We were one of the top two teams in Europe and should have been using our stature to buy the best players. Instead the owners siphoned the money off.

Yes they are splashing the cash now but they're the reason we are in our current predicament.

 

[Rozay]

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

I've seen it mentioned a few times that we 'won the league'. That is no small achievement of course in isolation, but we had a chance to do much more I think. We were a better team than Bayern and Real for a few years, but they basically went and bought good football players, while we went and bought relatively average ones - leading the inevitable to happen. We were in a period where we got to many CL finals, and perhaps we could have gotten over the line in one of them if we had been stronger.

And for me, Robben and Ribery were different class to Valencia, especially Robben. Ribery was in the Neymar position just after Messi and Ronaldo for a while, and came third in the Balon D'or too. Robben - well you only had to look at the difference in what he was doing in the CL to see the gap between him and Valencia, seeing as we are seemingly disregarding Bundesliga. He was scoring regularly, not just running down the wing and crossing. He was the match winner, scorer of great goals against great teams, in CL finals and semis etc, stunning volley to knock us out of the CL. This was far above anything Valencia could ever do. He was a linear player who could only move like a rook on a chess board, straight lines either up and down or side to side (rarely). Knock the ball forward and cross is the extent of his game, which is why he could never have had Robben like impact on the latter stages of the CL. In fact, off the top of my head, I can't even remember a single CL goal from Valencia. He probably got one or two, but that in itself, for a Utd 7 is terrible.

 

[Stacks]

Iirc, Ribery, snjeider and robben were all on the move at a similar time.

All 3 players served as catalysts to their sides winning the champions league