Every club makes mistakes in the transfer market, and Manchester United have probably made more than any other elite club in the last decade, but one keeps haunting them.
In the middle of a transfer window where they have added 35 Premier League goals with Matheus Cunha and (potentially) Bryan Mbeumo, the focus is still on goalscoring.
That’s because the team, as a whole, just scored 44 in the entirety of the Premier League season in 2024/25.
Therefore, a striker is next on the agenda because scoring goals has been the bane of this team. It’s just as well that they missed out on signing a player for just £15m who has now scored 37 and assisted nine in 49 games in all competitions.
Serhou Guirassy celebrating a goal for Dortmund, April 15, 2025
Photo by PAU BARRENA/AFP via Getty Images
Man Utd’s £15m miss continues to haunt them
United’s striker search this summer has floundered because they missed out on signing Liam Delap for £30m, who signed for Chelsea instead.
Once that happened, the search was always going to be difficult due to the numbers involved in the potential signing of other options.
It is a cruel irony that none of this would have happened had United just been awake to the opportunity of signing a player for just £15m last summer.
Instead, Borussia Dortmund, who are making a bit of a habit of gazumping United for players, moved quickly and signed Serhou Guirassy for his release clause of £15m.
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Guirassy was linked to United repeatedly on the back of a hot streak of scoring with Stuttgart, but United went for Joshua Zirkzee,
While Zirkzee has improved and faces a crucial 2025/26, Guirassy has set the world alight at Dortmund, proving that scoring with Stuttgart was no fluke.
Dortmund have reached the Club World Cup semi-finals courtesy of Guirassy’s brace against Monterrey.
It takes him to 37 goals in 49 games to go with nine assists, making it a combined 46 goals and assists in 49 games.
Serhou Guirassy miss is a lesson for Man Utd
A big reason why United wouldn’t have gone for Guirassy last summer is that he was already 28, so he was not likely to have any resale value.
However, his performances since then are a lesson for United that youth is not always the answer, especially at a position like No. 9, where proven output is a necessity.
To United’s credit, they seem to have learned that lesson too, signing proven players like Cunha and Mbeumo this summer, and most recently contacting 29-year-old Ollie Watkins as a potential option.
Man Utd fans would just have preferred if the board had learnt this lesson without missing out on a player who is among Europe’s top hitmen consistently.
An outlay of just £15m would have solved everything. Most importantly, even if it didn’t, the transfer fee was so minimal that United could have easily got out of it as well.