Was Sanchez our worst ever transfer?

Raw

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Yes ! Our worst signing by far and that record won't be broken anytime soon.

I cant fathom how the one responsible for the transfer still has a job.
Imagine if you made a crap decision at work that cost your employers £50m with nothing positive to come out of it. You'd be slaughtered!

Though I'm sure the decision to sign him wasn't because of one person, it was a collective mistake from Mourinho, Ed and whoever negotiated the contract. Only positive is that we've learned a lesson.
 

Van Piorsing

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Di Maria was much better for us. Some of the assists and goals were world class and he was able to get the best out of Mata when playing together.


Even Djemba won us FA Cup in the end... it doesn't look good for Sanchez at all.
 

SilentWitness

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Probably and also one of the worst when considering transfers in the PL era.

His ability at Arsenal to his ability at United is one of the biggest drops that I have ever seen. It was seen as one of the greatest coups at the time as you snatched him under the nose of Pep and City so it was a win for Mourinho/United and it was also seen as the transfer that would give you that star quality to kick on in 18/19 and mount a more serious title challenge and you did anything but. The amount of wages you spent on him were for a player that is getting 20+ goals a season in the league with ease and he only managed 5 in 45 (That is overall). Even looking past his goal record at his attitude/effort levels and they just did not seem like they were that of a player who was determined to get back to the top again and fight back against his dip in form. Seems to have had a 5 year peak from 23-28 and then lost something in himself in his latter career as he was average in 17-18 for both you and Arsenal.
 

Massive Spanner

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He could stake a claim for being the worst ever PL transfer in fairness. Only Carroll and Kepa are comparable
 

Sandikan

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Probably and also one of the worst when considering transfers in the PL era.

His ability at Arsenal to his ability at United is one of the biggest drops that I have ever seen. It was seen as one of the greatest coups at the time as you snatched him under the nose of Pep and City so it was a win for Mourinho/United and it was also seen as the transfer that would give you that star quality to kick on in 18/19 and mount a more serious title challenge and you did anything but. The amount of wages you spent on him were for a player that is getting 20+ goals a season in the league with ease and he only managed 5 in 45 (That is overall). Even looking past his goal record at his attitude/effort levels and they just did not seem like they were that of a player who was determined to get back to the top again and fight back against his dip in form. Seems to have had a 5 year peak from 23-28 and then lost something in himself in his latter career as he was average in 17-18 for both you and Arsenal.
I'm not sure where this "effort" thing came from.
It looked like he was putting the effort in, it was just his explosiveness and power had gone almost overnight.

He'd have 5 yard headstarts on not exactly speed machines, and still get beaten, still get outfought.

We went through a bit of the Rooney latter days scenario with him, talking about needing this and that around him, or a change of position - and to me that's always a sign it's near the end.

Still shocked by how it all panned out.
 

Sandikan

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Di Maria was much better for us. Some of the assists and goals were world class and he was able to get the best out of Mata when playing together.


Even Djemba won us FA Cup in the end... it doesn't look good for Sanchez at all.
Yeah there is no comparison.
Di Maria had a superb first month, and some bits and pieces later on.
Even as sub against Liverpool he had a great assist for Mata.

Plus we got most of the fee back.

Sanchez's output was next to nothing unfortunately. And we ended up shifting a player we'd swapped a 35m player for, for nothing. And that's if we didn't contribute any wages to this deal , which we probably did.
 

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Imagine if you made a crap decision at work that cost your employers £50m with nothing positive to come out of it. You'd be slaughtered!

Though I'm sure the decision to sign him wasn't because of one person, it was a collective mistake from Mourinho, Ed and whoever negotiated the contract. Only positive is that we've learned a lesson.
Yes, it's a collective mishandling of the club and I'm pretty sure the Glazer's were involved in the decision making process. I'm not sure Mourinho really wanted him.

But let's put Sanchez aside and let's just consider other sub-standard dealings we've made over the LVG and Mou era (cause funnily enough, the transfers during Moyes weren't that bad). Di Maria, Falcao, Schweinsteiger, Depay, Schneiderlin, Rojo, Mkhitaryan, Fred, Dalot,... Damn right I'd been slaughtered.
 

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Torres at Chelsea needs to be quite high up too.
Benteke at Liverpool.
Pool basically made the full fee back for Benteke though so not really

Torres was a shocker yeah but he still did more for Chelsea than Alexis. I'd say Shevchenko was worse than him.
 

Sandikan

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Pool basically made the full fee back for Benteke though so not really

Torres was a shocker yeah but he still did more for Chelsea than Alexis. I'd say Shevchenko was worse than him.
At least you could see Torres had slipped a bit during the 50m transfer. Shevchenko was still thought of as a world great when he came in. So yeah Sanchez is probably more your Shevchenko mixer. But at ridiculously higher wages even accounting for timeframes.
 

glazed

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He may only be the worst because of wage and fee inflation meaning the most recent disaster is always the worst. Inflation adjusted Sanchez was still awful though.

Owen Hargreaves was pretty bad, though he did have a season of being good first. He was the one that you knew would have been world class, so it hurt more.
 

Nytram Shakes

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The fact we are effectively paying him to leave I think sums it up!

The fact that 90% of pundits and people on this forum were describing it as a bargain and told us few who were questioning the logic of offering a winger coming up to 30 the largest contract in premier league history that we were stupid still irks me.

Its been utterly disastrous, it also set unrealistic expectations in regards to what other players will demand in terms of wages that we will be living with the consequences with for years.

The simple rule should be, if things don't work out for the player here, are his wages too high that it would never be matched by another club, if the answer is yes, then you don't offer them the contract.
 

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I’d probably put it as:
1. Sánchez
2. Di Maria (although much of this fee was recouped)
3. Schweinsteiger

Honourable mentions to Depay, Falcao, Veron.
It's crazy considering Sanchez and Schweinsteiger were two of my favourite players because of their general work ethic.
 

Revan

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Yep. It is hard to know exactly how much we spent on him, but it is likely over 70m-80m pounds, might be even considerably more (adding 30m for Mhiky, and his salary which might have been from 375k with no bonuses to some bonuses).

Add to that, Mourinho benched Martial and stalled his development while he was on a good form, that would not have happened without signing Sanchez.
 

Fluctuation0161

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Yeah there is no comparison.
Di Maria had a superb first month, and some bits and pieces later on.
Even as sub against Liverpool he had a great assist for Mata.

Plus we got most of the fee back.

Sanchez's output was next to nothing unfortunately. And we ended up shifting a player we'd swapped a 35m player for, for nothing. And that's if we didn't contribute any wages to this deal , which we probably did.
Plus we paid his rather high wages during his time here. While he contributed nothing.
 

Fluctuation0161

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And a load of it to ship him off to Inter too.
I will criticise the board for lots of things. They have contributed to our post Fergie demise with some school boy errors.

But Sanchez and his decline was almost impossible to predict. The only possible red flag was for his character from his friction with some of the Arsenal players. But I just think it was bad luck for United in this case.
 

davidmichael

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Yes, not even a question in my mind and I’d argue that he’s pound for pound the worst transfer in Premier League history too.
 

Luke1995

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What about Victor Valdes ? Dude was expected to come in and give De Gea a really tough challenge, but the manager at the time effectively decided he shouldn't play for us.
 
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Kleberson for me. Sanchez in third after Di Maria.
I understand why Sanchez and Don’t Maria are debatable. If I had the chance to meet Di Maria, I would flatly turn it down given how much I despise him, but still I think Sanchez is worse.

But to put Kleberson above both of them is absurd. He wasn’t massively expensive, and whilst he was a World Cup winner, didn’t come with massive expectation. He was an absolute failure, but nowhere near Sanchez and Di Maria, or a host of others.
 

Luke1995

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He’s on my list of worst transfers, but nowhere near Sanchez.
I'm sure if people go back and look at the 80's or the 70's there will be someone. George Best said in his book that basically, the team of 1973/74 was bad, and he had to leave before the end of the season.

I don't know enough about those times, maybe someone can point out a few terrible ones from waaaay back in the day ?
 

VorZakone

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I still don't understand his rapid decline. Just 6 months earlier he was comfortably a top 3 player in the PL.
 

RedDevilRoshi

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Definitely by far our worst signing post Fergie. Di Maria was awful but Sanchez just took it to a whole new level for me. Absolutely horrendous.
 

SAFMUTD

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Yes, by a mile. There are other transfers, such as Di Maria, Darmian, Lukaku, etc but on those we could get our money back, or at least most of it.

Alexis wasnt just a disaster because of the money paid, but it disrupted the squad. Martial being relegated to the bench, and our wage structure totally messed up, being honest we are really lucky he had a good spell at Inter and we could move him there.

I think is if not the worst transfer in the premier league at least is one of the worst 3. Along with Shevchenko to Chelsea and Andy Carroll to Liverpool.
 

SAFMUTD

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Definitely by far our worst signing post Fergie. Di Maria was awful but Sanchez just took it to a whole new level for me. Absolutely horrendous.
Not only post Fergie, can you remember a player during Sir Alex ternure which was worst?
 
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I'm sure if people go back and look at the 80's or the 70's there will be someone. George Best said in his book that basically, the team of 1973/74 was bad, and he had to leave before the end of the season.

I don't know enough about those times, maybe someone can point out a few terrible ones from waaaay back in the day ?
There are clearly some awful signings back then. The one that stands out in the 80’s was Birtles, but I’m the wrong side of 40 and can’t remember it, so I’m really limited when Fergie started as my reference point.
 

Yagami

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Definitely, and it could have been so much worse, too.

Had José stayed, this would've been the final nail in the coffin for Martial's career here, and we'd be stuck with Sanchez and Lukaku whilst Martial would've been killing it elsewhere.