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Rant about Man Utd's transfer activities
A lot of you know me as the positive guy around here. Last season when people were losing their minds and doubting Sir Alex, I was spouting my esoterical philosophies and getting as many as people as possible to list their best case scenarios for the season.
If there is one aspect of Man Utd that keeps ****ing me off, it would have to be our performances in the transfer market.
Year after year, I witness how we pay over the odds for players we could have bought, if we had pounced earlier and at the same time we manage to sell players at a loss. In some cases we just pay too much – period.
Not since the days of Jaap Stam and David Beckham have we sold a player at a decent price and if you asked me, we were crazy to sell Beckham for £25million. When he left Madrid for LA, Real announced that they had made 300million Euros from David Beckham and merchandise they sold with his image.
Now to be fair, I would have to say that Sir Alex got it right on many occasions like with Roy Keane, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Andy Cole, Cristiano Ronaldo and Eric Cantona.
But even Eric Cantona was a bit of a lucky break, because it was the Leeds manager who mentioned Eric could be bought, if Alex was interested. Sir Alex was bowled over and took up the offer – he originally had called because of another player, so lady luck was smiling on us all there.
Consider the following:
Rio Ferdinand was sold from West Ham to Leeds for £18million and was bought 18 months later by Man Utd for £29million making him the most expensive defender in the world - a record that still stands.
Dimitar Berbatov finally joined our ranks on Monday the 1st of September 2008, but Sir Alex admitted, what I had read in the German press, which is that Man Utd knew all about Berbatov and had bid for him, but entered the transfer too late and in the end he went to Spurs for £10.9million.
According to the German press, Man Utd wanted to wrap up the sale of Ruud van Nistelrroy before focusing on Berbatov and in the end he went to Spurs.
On Monday we bought him for a reported £30.75million.
Speaking of Ruud, the brother of Sir Alex, Martin, had scouted him on a muddy pitch in the Netherlands and thought he had uncovered a marvelous player. The local scout who was with him kept saying he wasn’t United quality.
Martin instructed him to keep tabs on the player and to report back, if he was moving. The Dutch scout did not do so and the next time they saw Ruud he was banging in goals for PSV and ended up costing Man Utd £19million.
For goodness sake, hire an assistant for Martin Ferguson to remind him of which players he wanted the local scouts to keep tabs on!
Ruud was sold in the summer of 2006 for £10million with a lot of people saying it was a fair price for a 30 year old. In the same summer, Chelsea spent £30million to bring 30 year-old Andiy Shevchenko to Stamford Bridge.
This summer, Mikael Silvestre and Louis Saha were sold for a measly £750k and £4million respectively.
Now in the case of Silvestre, I can understand. He was up for a testimonial, but just wanted regular football and the club wanted to make it easy for him to leave. But in the case of Saha, £4million is a big loss on a player, who cost us around £12million.
Injuries and all, Lyon put in a bid of £9million for him last summer. Man Utd didn’t take it and the most telling contribution he made all season was to score against Sunderland. You might say, those points helped to win the league, but if we had sold him, we would have had the cash to pursue other targets. Maybe someone like Fernando Torres?
Or better yet, if we had bought Berba in the summer of 2006, we could have just sold the balsa wood man.
In short, with have too many cases like RVN being sold below value and not enough instances like Kieran Richardson being sold at decent or even above value.
It’s starting to vex me, because I can’t get my head around how a club like man United can’t hire enough people to pull of multiple transfers at the same time. How could we move too late for Berba, when we wanted him?!?!
For goodness sake higher one extra person to handle transfers and save the club millions of pounds!!!
In addition, it makes the club and the fans look a bit silly really. Having to pay so much more than any other club and then selling players like David Beckham and RVN on the cheap is a crime. Even if Sir Alex wanted them out, they should have been sold at market value. Can I mention that Thiery Henry was sold for £16.5million last season at the age of 29?
It seems to me that many, many millions of pounds are being wasted by the club I love because of simple bad planning. I would be much obliged, if someone could forward this to David Gill or the Glazers.
I would love to do a lot of Root Cause Analysis for them and help them plan their transfer activities.
I would work for a low-level manager’s salary and a pair of season tickets.
Thank you.
A lot of you know me as the positive guy around here. Last season when people were losing their minds and doubting Sir Alex, I was spouting my esoterical philosophies and getting as many as people as possible to list their best case scenarios for the season.
If there is one aspect of Man Utd that keeps ****ing me off, it would have to be our performances in the transfer market.
Year after year, I witness how we pay over the odds for players we could have bought, if we had pounced earlier and at the same time we manage to sell players at a loss. In some cases we just pay too much – period.
Not since the days of Jaap Stam and David Beckham have we sold a player at a decent price and if you asked me, we were crazy to sell Beckham for £25million. When he left Madrid for LA, Real announced that they had made 300million Euros from David Beckham and merchandise they sold with his image.
Now to be fair, I would have to say that Sir Alex got it right on many occasions like with Roy Keane, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Andy Cole, Cristiano Ronaldo and Eric Cantona.
But even Eric Cantona was a bit of a lucky break, because it was the Leeds manager who mentioned Eric could be bought, if Alex was interested. Sir Alex was bowled over and took up the offer – he originally had called because of another player, so lady luck was smiling on us all there.
Consider the following:
Rio Ferdinand was sold from West Ham to Leeds for £18million and was bought 18 months later by Man Utd for £29million making him the most expensive defender in the world - a record that still stands.
Dimitar Berbatov finally joined our ranks on Monday the 1st of September 2008, but Sir Alex admitted, what I had read in the German press, which is that Man Utd knew all about Berbatov and had bid for him, but entered the transfer too late and in the end he went to Spurs for £10.9million.
According to the German press, Man Utd wanted to wrap up the sale of Ruud van Nistelrroy before focusing on Berbatov and in the end he went to Spurs.
On Monday we bought him for a reported £30.75million.
Speaking of Ruud, the brother of Sir Alex, Martin, had scouted him on a muddy pitch in the Netherlands and thought he had uncovered a marvelous player. The local scout who was with him kept saying he wasn’t United quality.
Martin instructed him to keep tabs on the player and to report back, if he was moving. The Dutch scout did not do so and the next time they saw Ruud he was banging in goals for PSV and ended up costing Man Utd £19million.
For goodness sake, hire an assistant for Martin Ferguson to remind him of which players he wanted the local scouts to keep tabs on!
Ruud was sold in the summer of 2006 for £10million with a lot of people saying it was a fair price for a 30 year old. In the same summer, Chelsea spent £30million to bring 30 year-old Andiy Shevchenko to Stamford Bridge.
This summer, Mikael Silvestre and Louis Saha were sold for a measly £750k and £4million respectively.
Now in the case of Silvestre, I can understand. He was up for a testimonial, but just wanted regular football and the club wanted to make it easy for him to leave. But in the case of Saha, £4million is a big loss on a player, who cost us around £12million.
Injuries and all, Lyon put in a bid of £9million for him last summer. Man Utd didn’t take it and the most telling contribution he made all season was to score against Sunderland. You might say, those points helped to win the league, but if we had sold him, we would have had the cash to pursue other targets. Maybe someone like Fernando Torres?
Or better yet, if we had bought Berba in the summer of 2006, we could have just sold the balsa wood man.
In short, with have too many cases like RVN being sold below value and not enough instances like Kieran Richardson being sold at decent or even above value.
It’s starting to vex me, because I can’t get my head around how a club like man United can’t hire enough people to pull of multiple transfers at the same time. How could we move too late for Berba, when we wanted him?!?!
For goodness sake higher one extra person to handle transfers and save the club millions of pounds!!!
In addition, it makes the club and the fans look a bit silly really. Having to pay so much more than any other club and then selling players like David Beckham and RVN on the cheap is a crime. Even if Sir Alex wanted them out, they should have been sold at market value. Can I mention that Thiery Henry was sold for £16.5million last season at the age of 29?
It seems to me that many, many millions of pounds are being wasted by the club I love because of simple bad planning. I would be much obliged, if someone could forward this to David Gill or the Glazers.
I would love to do a lot of Root Cause Analysis for them and help them plan their transfer activities.
I would work for a low-level manager’s salary and a pair of season tickets.
Thank you.