Man Utd used to sign the ‘best’ players from Premier League rivals; moves for Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo suggest a welcome return of that ‘policy’.
Gary Neville once kindly explained the three facets which comprised the transfer philosophy of Sir Alex Ferguson, if indeed such a thing could exist for a manager whose career spanned almost four decades.
“There were three categories to the policy,” the pundit said. “He wanted to promote youth wherever possible, that was number one before he even looked at the external market.”
If “promote” is actually a synonym for “offload” – and in the dictionary of Big Sir Jim most things seem to be – then consider that box ticked by Man Utd in 2025.
“Number two was to look at the best in the Premier League; those he could trust and still have growth and be with the club for a long time: Gary Pallister, Steve Bruce, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Robin van Persie.”
The signing of Matheus Cunha, pursuit of Bryan Mbeumo and potential targeting of more stars close to home suggests the dying art which underpinned so much of the club’s modern success has been resuscitated.
“And then he always wanted emerging international talent that could come over to Manchester, that he could work with and develop into great players: Nemanja Vidic, Peter Schmeichel, Patrice Evra, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.”
Rasmus Hojlund, Manuel Ugarte, Antony, Andre Onana. The list goes on.
The second point is the most pertinent to the current era and provides long-overdue proof of some joined-up thinking with recruitment at Carrington. Mbeumo and Cunha were the two biggest overperformers on xG in the Premier League last season, are 25 and 26 and feel like precisely the sort of signings Liverpool would make under Jurgen Klopp: players proven in the ever-improving middle of England’s top flight, but with an obvious scalability to develop and perform at a higher level.
There is a slight difference in that Liverpool scrolled down the Premier League table to identify such signings, while Man Utd are looking around and even above them. But it is a solid blueprint to follow.
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That comes with caveats: one season of xG overperformance presents obvious issues with sustainability and these are extortionate costs for a club publicly walking a PSR tightrope, who need to nail every aspect of their transfer business this summer. But if the argument was that sacrificing Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo would only be for the greater good if Man Utd could be trusted to spend the money properly, removing their erratic and unreliable recruitment from the equation to simply buy the closest things to guaranteed successes might make it work.
Ferguson leaned on those intra-Premier League transfers to build the foundation for each of his great Man Utd squads. There were some David Bellions along the way but a ludicrous XI can be assembled from such signings: Van der Sar; Valencia, Smalling, Ferdinand, Young; Keane, Carrick, Smith; Tevez, Yorke, Rooney, with Robin van Persie, Dimitar Berbatov, Teddy Sheringham and Phil Jones on an absurdly attacking bench.
But in the years since his retirement it was an ideology slowly phased out for style over substance, culminating in the ruinous summer of 2021. Man Utd were at a crossroads, Premier League and Europa League runners-up with fairly deep runs in the domestic cups behind them, but with a strong sense that while Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had built a solid base, he had reached a point where someone else was required to push on and capitalise on his work.
Man Utd avoided answering that awkward question and signed players from Real Madrid, Juventus and Borussia Dortmund instead, because they wanted the honour and esteem of being seen to deal with such clubs without a second thought as to whether Raphael Varane, Cristiano Ronaldo or Jadon Sancho actually added more to the squad than they took away, and Solskjaer was sacked within a matter of months.
The club chose the wrong path then, in their last true position of strength in summer 2023 when they hedged one too many bets on Onana, Mason Mount and Hojlund, and the following year when instead of sacking Erik ten Hag, they doubled down by spending £200m on players not only specifically for him, but categorically incompatible with the replacement they inevitably had to appoint.
The hope is that hitting rock bottom can prompt better decisions at this latest seasonal junction; the early signs are promising. Neville once said “if you had the best player in the Premier League, Man Utd had to buy that player”. Times have changed and those signings have long been unattainable, but buying the best Premier League players actually available to them seems like a sensible alternative Man Utd have long ignored.
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