Despite all the complaints about Manchester United’s reinforcements over the past decade or so, how much has the club really bothered with player transfers?
It’s hard to think of too many examples of players truly failing after leaving Old Trafford, but Alejandro Garnacho in particular had a disastrous first season at Chelsea after his £40m summer move.
Players who struggled in Manchester don’t always leave the club red-faced after a transfer, but that doesn’t mean the Red Devils haven’t made the odd mistake or two in recent years.
Quite a number of players seemed to slip through the net, especially under the watch of manager Erik ten Hag, with the Dutch manager not having faith in a select few players, who seemed to be coming back to bite United.
Departure – Ten Hag’s biggest transfer mistake at Manchester United
Whether signing Anthony, Rasmus Hojlund or Sofian Amrabat, the approach taken under Ten Hag in terms of signing new players has not always been the most fruitful, particularly the obsession with Dutch and Eredivisie-based reinforcements.
Regardless of whether the former Ajax manager is solely to blame, questions are also being raised about the players he allowed to transfer, especially those from the academy.
The most obvious example in that sense is Scott McTominay, but given the Ballon d’Or candidate’s success at Napoli, with United raking in a £30m transfer fee for a player who was 28 at the time and had one year left on his contract, it still feels like a deal that proved to be the best-case scenario for everyone involved.
The Scottish star was a player Ten Hag clearly liked, but the same cannot be said for the likes of Alvaro Carreras, a young Spaniard who has been repeatedly overlooked by the Dutch manager despite United’s continued lack of form at left-back.
The impressive full-back, who joined Benfica on a permanent basis in 2024, secured a £40m move to Real Madrid just one year later, enjoying a rapid rise through the ranks for a man who had never featured in the top flight with the Red Devils.
Most Valuable Man United Alumni | |
|---|---|
player | value |
Mainu | £60m |
green wood | £47 million |
racing | £42m |
garner | £38 million |
rashford | £34m |
McTominay | £34m |
field | £27 million |
henderson | £22 million |
grenache | £22 million |
via Transfermarkt | |
Returning to the midfield unit, James Garner made just seven first-team appearances for United before being sold to Everton for just £9 million, and the young Englishman has since emerged as a true star for the Toffees.
Last season, for example, the 25-year-old ranked fifth in the division for assists and 10th for key passes completed, and looked like the type of player who could be a viable solution in United’s midfield.
He’s not the only one…
Manchester United have already sold their answer to Andrei Santos
With Elliott Anderson and Matheus Fernandes leaving for other countries, United have topped their list of midfield candidates this summer and have set their sights on Chelsea’s Andrej Santos.
The interest came as a surprise, but the young Brazilian has been on loan at Strasbourg under manager Liam Rosenior and appears to have been on the club’s radar for some time.
However, signing the 22-year-old won’t necessarily come cheap for INEOS, with Santos signing Vasco de Gama in a deal worth £18m in January 2023, which will likely be around £50m.
Given the nature of the asking price, United may be left scratching their heads as to why a certain Maxi Oyedele was let go. The Carrington School graduate is currently attracting attention in Strasbourg.
Still only 21, the Salford-born midfielder was part of the 2022 FA Youth Cup winning team alongside Garnacho and Koby Mainu, coming off the bench in the exciting win over Nottingham Forest.
He then went on loan to Altrincham and Forest Green Rovers, but returned to the first team in the 2024 pre-season, not least scoring an assist in the 2-0 win over Rangers that summer.
It looked like there was a genuine player in there, but ten Hag and his mates saw Oyedele join Legia Warsaw for a fee of just £500,000 and tried to cash in instead.
Like Garner before him, the two-cap Poland international was apparently a favorite of United captain Bruno Fernandes, and the Portuguese is thought to have been “shocked” to see Oyedele sold.
“It’s no coincidence that when we spoke to him, Bruno Fernandes said he was shocked that United let him go because he looked great in pre-season against Manchester,” Legia Warsaw manager Gonzalo Faio says of Oyedele.
Fernandes certainly knows a player when he sees one, and Oyedele did well enough in Warsaw last summer to earn him a move to France.
Although his start to life in Ligue 1 was interrupted by injury, the man who took over Santos’ No. 8 shirt at Strasbourg excelled in the final months of the season, producing a memorable performance with a stunning Trivera finish against FC Nantes in March.
Oyder is a versatile talent who can also play at full-back, but his quality of ball-playing stands out most in Ligue 1 last season, when he boasted a passing accuracy of 90%, yet only won possession 5.5 times per game.
While this was only in a small number of matches, such a performance compares favorably with Santos’ own Ligue 1 averages from the previous year, with the South American boasting an 89% passing accuracy and losing the ball 8.3 times per game.
Oyedele is Bruco’s direct replacement for French international Santos, but could he have been United’s version of a Chelsea man had he stayed at Old Trafford?
As already mentioned, United have rarely been particularly troubled by their recent high-profile sales, but giving Garner, Carreras and Oyedele just seven first-team minutes is not an accurate reflection of Ten Hag’s talent judgement.
