Why Manchester United’s transfer policy has failed so badly since

The incident happened in 2010, but United knew nothing about it. Somehow the club had spent pounds 16 million on a player without knowing that he was the subject of a criminal investigation. Rojo was never charged, but he had to wait a month to be given his work permit because of the allegations against him.

Part one: How Man United crumbled after Fergie’s exit

It had barely been a year since Sir Alex Ferguson had stood down and United’s seventh-place league finish had underlined the stunning nature of the achievements to which Ferguson had inspired his team. The Rojo episode had now laid bare the Scot’s ability to run a huge football club with minimal help from others – and the challenge that it would present for those, in the boardroom and in the dugout, who came after him. As one senior source put it, Ferguson was “like the pied piper’.’ He led. Everyone else followed.

This was never clearer than in the field of player recruitment. During the final years of Ferguson’s reign, United employed only 12 full-time scouts, and yet the club still managed to sign some of the best players in the world. Sometimes those dozen scouts would not be going to Ferguson with recommendations – it was the other way around. He would bounce ideas off them based on what he had heard from an old friend or colleague within the game.

Before he signed a player he would know everything about them, not only about their technical skills, but also about their character. Ferguson would speak to those who had worked with the transfer target, the player himself and quite often their family too, to make sure there were no skeletons in the closet. It was the kind of due diligence – Ferguson would have just called it doing his job – that appeared to have been overlooked in the Rojo signing.

Many, including Van Gaal, have accused United of spending more time focusing on the commercial side of the club rather than on first-team matters. Some argue that is a fair assessment, but it would be wrong to say that little attention is paid to footballing matters. The club know that they must have the best players in the world to succeed and after the Rojo debacle, they made sure that more checks were carried out on transfer targets. One senior executive summed up the situation a few years ago when he said: “If you don’t get recruitment right, you are f***ed.’‘

This is the story of how Manchester United have, in the nine years since Ferguson retired, consistently got recruitment wrong.

Plenty of signings – Most of them flops

In the post-Ferguson era, United have spent roughly pounds 1.2 billion on signings and they have only one FA Cup, one Europa League and a single League Cup to show for it. Of the 40 players that United have signed in the past nine years, you can count the number of successes on one hand. The jury is out on some: Jadon Sancho, for example, could become one of the best wingers in the Premier League if he gets the right guidance. However, the majority of signings over the past nine years have flopped (see table).

So when did the decline in standards begin? Some claim it started in 2005, when the Glazers took over and saddled the club with debt. Others point to the summer of 2009, when Cristiano Ronaldo left for Real Madrid and was replaced by Antonio Valencia. Others argue that 2012 was a key year. That summer, United passed on Eden Hazard and signed Shinji Kagawa instead. Kagawa was viewed as the long-term replacement for Wayne Rooney, who was open to a switch to Chelsea. Ferguson expected Rooney to leave, but after the Scot retired, United handed the England forward a pounds 300,000-per-week deal even though his powers were in decline. Perception has become a big theme at United in the post-Ferguson era. The Glazers felt that losing Ferguson and Rooney in the same summer would be a bad look, so they paid over the odds.

Perhaps the most devastating damage came in the two-year period that followed the Ferguson retirement in 2013. United, at that point, still believed it was possible for the club to be run in the same way that it had been under Ferguson. David Moyes was given full control of transfers by Ed Woodward, the executive vice-chairman who had taken over from David Gill at the same time as Ferguson had departed. Some inside the club felt Moyes was overwhelmed.

He was being pulled from pillar to post by different departments and could not guide the club in the same way that Ferguson had done. Moyes had his faults, but with so much expected of him and so little support around him, he was always destined to fail. “Poor David,’‘ one senior staff member said when reflecting on the structure Moyes inherited.

United tried – and failed – to sign Leighton Baines and ended up paying pounds 27 million to sign Marouane Fellaini because they missed a window that would have allowed them to sign him for pounds 22 million. Thiago Alcantara, Gareth Bale and Cesc Fabregas were discussed as possible targets. In January 2014, with United in danger of finishing outside of the top four, Moyes signed Juan Mata for pounds 37.1 million and stuck him on the right wing.

Rather than take power away from the manager, United kept the same approach under Van Gaal, who spent almost pounds 150 million on Rojo, Luke Shaw, Ander Herrera, Angel Di Maria, Daley Blind and Falcao shortly after he replaced Moyes as manager in the summer of 2014.

United paid Real Madrid pounds 59.7 million for Di Maria, but he stayed for only one year before leaving for Paris Saint-Germain. The Argentinian embarrassed Van Gaal by not turning up for the flight to Seattle for United’s pre-season tour. Di Maria also fell out with several teammates. Many of them felt that he was too flaky. He was not helped by the fact that there was no natural position for him in the team. All three front positions were taken, so Di Maria played central midfield – a position he has not played in since.

Complete faith in the managers

Still, the board were unruffled. Van Gaal was in complete control. It was the same the next summer when, after qualifying for the Champions League, United opened the cheque book again. There were six new faces – Memphis Depay, Matteo Darmian, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Sergio Romero, Anthony Martial and Morgan Schneiderlin. Complete faith was placed in the manager and again a lack of due diligence cost the club.

Schweinsteiger arrived for pounds 6.8 million – a proven winner, Van Gaal thought. That view overlooked the fact that he had started only 82 games in the previous four years due to a series of injuries. “They [Bayern] sold us a crock,’‘ one United staffer said.

“During the last three years he was never in good condition,” Pep Guardiola, the Bayern manager at the time, said after selling the midfielder.

Depay proved another questionable acquisition. Van Gaal knew Depay liked the lavish lifestyle – he had many cars, one of which had stars stitched into its upholstery – but having coached him as Holland manager, thought he could control Depay’s ego. He was wrong. Depay annoyed some of his teammates, who thought that the Dutchman was not prioritising his football. When Van Gaal ordered Depay to play with the under-21s he turned up in a Rolls-Royce. Less than one year into his five-year contract, the pounds 31 million winger was left out of the squad for the 2015 FA Cup final.

The problems that had been created by giving Moyes and Van Gaal free rein over player recruitment only became clear shortly after that cup final, when Jose Mourinho took over. In an attempt to move away from Moyes’s direct style, Van Gaal had assembled a squad that was blessed with a number of technical players who were good at keeping the ball, such as Blind and Schneiderlin. Van Gaal liked players who could operate in several different positions and was not afraid to supplement the squad with youngsters.

Mourinho, who was initially given the same level of control over transfers as his predecessors, wanted two players for every position and preferred most of them to be experienced operators. Utility players were also a no-no for him. Out went Depay and Schneiderlin, while Shaw, Marcus Rashford and Martial were given the tough-love treatment. Schweinsteiger, too immobile and closely aligned with Van Gaal, was ordered to train with the youth team and look for a move elsewhere.

Mourinho wanted strong personalities, which is why Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Eric Bailly and Paul Pogba were among the first clutch of new arrivals. The only player who did not fit the mould was Henrikh Mkhitaryan but the Armenian had just won the Bundesliga player of the year so Mourinho was hopeful of turning him into a player who could conform to his style of play.

Expensive misfits: Sanchez and Martial

By then United realised that the recruitment department had to move on from Ferguson’s relatively small group of trusted scouts and by 2016, the club had added more than 50 scouts to their roster. But this only confused Mourinho, who did not know which senior member of the team to turn to. Marcel Bout, the head of global scouting who left the club only last month, was a close friend of Van Gaal, the man that Mourinho had replaced as manager.

The scouts, meanwhile, found some of their orders confusing. A number of them were told to compile reports or grade all 22 players that were on the pitch in the matches that they were scouting. They thought that their time would be better spent focusing on one or two players per game, rather than 22.

In the 2017-18 season, Mourinho continued to add experienced faces to his squad, such as Nemanja Matic and Alexis Sanchez. The Chilean, who earned a basic wage of pounds 391,000 per week, would only score three league goals in his 18-month spell at United.

There were signs that Sanchez’s powers were on the wane in his final six months at Arsenal, but United pressed ahead partly because doing so would give Manchester City, another of his suitors, a bloody nose.

Sanchez is a strange case. Sometimes he would train like a demon. One bizarre incident highlighted this. In one break during a training session, one of Mourinho’s coaches told the players to take a break for a couple of minutes on the sidelines. Sanchez ignored the instruction, dropped to the turf and did dozens of press-ups. At other times, he looked uninterested and his performances were rated as “average”.

The player himself became disheartened with his manager’s tactical instructions and management style, particularly when Mourinho gave the players the hairdryer treatment. Sanchez went into his shell when he separated from his girlfriend Mayte Rodriguez, the Chilean actress with whom he was having a long-distance relationship.

With Ibrahimovic struggling due to injury, Mourinho signed Romelu Lukaku for a fee of up to pounds 90 million from Everton in the summer of 2017. Now Mourinho had a team that was solid in defence, had experienced operators in most areas of the pitch and had a No 9 that was comfortable playing with his back to goal.

Martial was another player that Mourinho wanted out. Mourinho had read reports that United were determined to renew Martial’s contract. Mourinho was not a fan of the Frenchman, so he started spreading the word on United’s 2018 pre-season tour to America that he would not object to his departure, provided he went to “the right club”, which presumably meant one outside of the Premier League. Woodward dug his heels in. Martial, reportedly one of Joel Glazer’s favourite players, would stay. There was a fear that if Martial left he could become one of the best players in Europe.

That summer tour was the beginning of the end for Mourinho. His grievances with the board escalated after they refused to sanction his pursuit of Harry Maguire. By December 2018, Mourinho was sacked and the club had appointed a new manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Solskjaer works with a new scouting system

In terms of personality, Solskjaer liked players who were humble off the pitch but had plenty of self-belief on it. They had to be young, hungry and quick. Playing with the handbrake off was the order of the day. Many of the players that Mourinho signed, such as Sanchez, Lukaku and Matic were not suited to that style of play.

By the summer of 2019, Lukaku had made it clear that he wanted to leave for Inter Milan. At the end of every training session on United’s pre-season tour to Australia, he would report a new ailment. First his hamstring started feeling tight, then he felt pain in his calf, then his ankle. A few weeks later, the deal with the Italian club was secured.

By the time that Solskjaer landed the job on a permanent basis in March 2019, United had updated their scouting database to allow more external data to be added to players’ profiles. United proudly let it be known that their database contained 804 right backs. With such a vast net, surely the club would be able to find the right man to fill the position? Maybe not. The man they settled on, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, was a good tackler, but rarely ventured forward, which is what Solskjaer wanted to see from the pounds 50 million signing from Crystal Palace. Some also questioned whether he had the personality. The full back was painfully shy.

By that point, the recruitment process was less dependent on the manager. The process, which is still in place now, begins with the manager telling the club which areas need improvement. The recruitment team then use their database to come up with a shortlist, which is whittled down to ten. The senior scouts, who would meet with Solskjaer every four weeks, would then propose two or three options to the Norwegian, who would make his choice.

If Solskjaer objected to the choices, he could veto them. The recruitment team also held a veto. Once a target was approved Matt Judge, the director of football negotiations, would begin talks with the selling club and player. Judge left the club this summer as part of a staff clear-out.

United have also been woeful when it comes to selling players. They often hand out lengthy, lucrative contract extensions to players that do not deserve them, just so that they do not lose them on a free transfer. Solskjaer was surprised when, shortly after his interim appointment, United offered Phil Jones a contract until 2023, with the option of a further year. Rojo, Bailly and Matic are others who have been given new contracts over the past few seasons with little justification. United have recouped only pounds 340 million in transfers since Ferguson retired. Of the 40 players that they have signed over the past nine years, only James and Blind have been sold for a profit.

By the time that Solskjaer’s first full season in charge had begun, however, United felt they had finally solved their player recruitment problems. James, the Wales winger, and Maguire joined to take the club near to the pounds 150 million spending mark for the summer of 2019.

It proved a false dawn. James was never cut out to be a United player while, after a solid start, Maguire has had his issues too. Bruno Fernandes joined six months later in a deal that could net Sporting Lisbon up to pounds 67 million. He, Ibrahimovic and the back-up goalkeeper Sergio Romero have been the only truly impressive signings of the post-Ferguson era, though others have the potential to join them in that bracket.

The idea of chasing young, hungry players remained in place for much of Solskjaer’s reign, but towards the end of his time, he also opted for players such as Ronaldo, 37, and the 35-year-old Edinson Cavani.

Ronaldo was a curious signing. Jorge Mendes, the super-agent, offered Ronaldo to City during a visit to Manchester last August. Guardiola was seriously considering the offer but some of his staff had reservations about whether Ronaldo’s arrival would upset the harmony of the dressing room because he would come in as the club’s top earner on over pounds 400,000.

As Guardiola mulled over the possibility, United swooped.

Ronaldo’s arrival made sense in some respects. He was a proven goalscorer and the squad lacked leadership, which he could provide.

However, one coach remarked that they had spent three years putting together a squad that was suited to one style of play and then bought a player who was incompatible with it. Ronaldo scored 18 Premier League goals last season, but he does not press, which is a key tenet of any team with title aspirations.

Paul Pogba was another source of controversy. Some players could not believe that he was not chastised by Solskjaer for claiming in an interview in 2019 that he was considering “a new challenge elsewhere”, and were annoyed that while they played through the pain barrier with injuries when Pogba was injured he was allowed to fly to foreign countries during his rehabilitation.

Some players also privately questioned Solskjaer’s decision to make Maguire captain only six months after he joined from Leicester City. Some of his performances over the past year or two have been poor, but he is not the only one whose form has suffered. Some players put their regression down to poor coaching or direction. Kieran McKenna, for example, conducted a lot of the training sessions and pre-match team talks during his time as a first-team coach under Solskjaer. McKenna was popular with some of the younger players but others questioned his methods given that he had an unheralded playing career that ended when he was 22 because of injury. In fairness to McKenna he is doing well in his first spell in management, at Ipswich Town.

But for whatever reason it did not take long for Solskjaer’s reign to come to an end this season. Despite a bright start their campaign fell apart in the autumn with a series of catastrophic performances, culminating in their 4-1 humiliation at Watford, after which Solskjaer was sacked.

A toxic dressing room

Solskjaer was replaced by Ralf Rangnick who was appointed until the end of the season. For the respected German the initial problem was that he was inheriting a squad that contained players who had been bought by five different managers who all had different styles of play – one that was unsuited to his preferred style, the pressing game. Matic, for example, did not have the energy to go box to box.

But there was also another growing issue – the dressing-room atmosphere was getting worse week by week and has been described as “toxic” by many sources at different stages of the season. Cliques had developed, and there was resentment towards some players by their teammates. The poor attitude of some, particularly those who sulked after being left out of the team, added to the malaise. Others were confused by some of Rangnick’s tactics, and the methods of his coaches, including Chris Armas, the American recruited in December.

Rangnick has been replaced by the much-admired former Ajax coach Erik ten Hag, who faces a crucial summer in the transfer market. The veto system will remain in place, with Ten Hag reporting to John Murtough, the football director, who was appointed by Woodward in March 2021 when he realised that change was necessary after the failures of his reign. Murtough championed Ten Hag’s appointment and is now in charge of the football operation.

A personable figure who is popular around Carrington, Murtough will lead the attempt to right the wrongs of the past few years. He has implemented changes to the academy which are starting to pay off if United’s recent FA Youth Cup win is anything to go by.

Unlike Judge and Woodward, who worked out of the Mayfair office in London, Murtough is based at Carrington, which helps the club run more efficiently. Richard Arnold, who has replaced Woodward as chief executive, is more hands off when it comes to the football operation, and is based at Old Trafford. Bout and Jim Lawlor, the former head scout, have left in order to streamline a scouting operation led by Steve Brown, who reports to Murtough. He makes informed decisions on targets in consultation with the recruitment department and the manager.

Given that six players – Matic, Mata, Pogba, Cavani, Jesse Lingard and Lee Grant – are leaving on free transfers and others – Bailly, Jones, Wan-Bissaka and Martial – are considering their futures, it promises to be a busy few months at Old Trafford. Ten Hag will need reinforcements, principally in central midfield and attack, though the Dutchman, who has a good track record of bringing young players through, will dip into the academy to add to his squad too.

Jurrien Timber and Lisandro Martinez, the Ajax defenders, feature on his shortlist, as does their Brazilian teammate Antony, the right winger. Matthijs de Ligt and Frenkie de Jong, part of Ten Hag’s Ajax team before they left for Juventus and Barcelona, are other candidates. The Villarreal defender Pau Torres is also admired.

Ten Hag will have about pounds 120 million to spend – plus money raised from sales – but the failure to qualify for the Champions League means that United do not have the pulling power that they used to. It is hard to think, for example, that Erling Haaland ever seriously contemplated the prospect of joining United.

There is hope that Ten Hag’s arrival will mark a turning point in United’s decline. Rangnick said recently that it may take only two or three transfer windows to rectify the problems in the United squad, so long as they buy the right players. Unless United get their recruitment right over the next couple of years, they run the risk of falling even further behind City and Liverpool.

– The Times

Originally published as Why Manchester United’s transfer policy has failed so badly since