By John McDougall
During his tenure as Manchester United manager, Sir Alex
Ferguson has been prolific in signing young talent and turning them into
top-quality players. However, nobody is perfect and during his 25 years at the
helm of England’s
most successful club, he has had his fair share of what turned out to be
shocking forays into the transfer market. In response to my previous article
chronicling Ferguson’s best 10 signings, and in the interest of fairness, here are his worst 10
purchases in the transfer market. Again, on similar lines to my first article on Fergie's Best
Signings, I have tried to compile the list based on how terrible the player
was, the transfer fee wasted on them, and any pitiful amounts they were sold
for. Also, this list is purely confined to players whom Ferguson has bought in the transfer market
so, regrettably, there is no room for Jonny Evans and his ilk in all this.
Transfer fee paid: Trial
I know what most of you are probably thinking, “Who the hell
is that???” Well, I’ll tell you. William Prunier played in the very first
United game my dad took me to in 1995, against Queen’s Park Rangers. Prunier
was a centre-half and was signed on a trial basis by Ferguson, and performed admirably in a 2-1
victory against the Rs. However, in the next game against Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane, he
was utterly shocking. He was part of a makeshift defence that conceded 4 goals
in a humiliating 4-1 loss, for which he was branded the scapegoat, and was
shipped out of the club by his own consent shortly afterwards. His time in the
Old Trafford limelight was as brief as it was eventful.
9. Gabriel Obertan
Transfer fee paid: £3 million
Transfer fee received: £3 million
United have had their fair share of Gallic icons over the
years, with ‘Le King’ Eric Cantona at the top of the tree. Alas, French winger
Gabriel Obertan, who joined the Reds in 2009 from Bordeaux, was destined not to become one of
them. Although initially looking rather promising, it soon became clear that
the only thing Obertan possessed was pace and nothing else. There was hardly
ever any end product and his ability to cross the ball was terrible, way behind
Nani, Antonio Valencia and Ji-Sung
Park for positions on the
flanks. However, Newcastle United were somehow persuaded to part with £3
million last summer for the Frenchman, and thus Ferguson managed to recoup the initial
transfer fee outlaid.
8. Ben Foster
Transfer fee paid: £1 million
Transfer fee received: £6 million
One quote from Ben Foster himself, on the eve of playing his
former club for Birmingham
City last Christmas,
summed up why he did not make it as a Manchester United goalkeeper, “A club
like United is cut-throat. But I’m loving it (here at St Andrew’s). I don’t
wish I’d stuck around at Old Trafford at all”. Foster has also said, “I love
winning. If I’m playing a video game, anything, I want to win. But the United
thing is another step up the ladder of mental toughness and it’s not really
me”. It is clear then that Foster simply could not deal with the immense
pressure that came from being the number one at Manchester United, where any
mistake, particularly from a goalkeeper, is punished vociferously by all in the
football world. He was tipped to be England’s
number one, and may still be one day, but it was another buy that ultimately
proved to be more miss than hit for Ferguson.
7. Anderson
Transfer fee paid: £20.4 million
A harsh one perhaps, as Anderson is still only 23, has had several
injury problems in his United career thusfar, and he may yet develop into a
brilliant player. If he becomes the cog in United’s midfield engine-room in the
coming seasons, then I’ll hold my hands up. But, for someone who was signed as
an attacking midfielder, and who has been playing regularly in the English top
flight for almost five seasons now, to have scored only 7 goals in over 140
games is, quite frankly, pathetic. He is the present scapegoat for United’s
contemporary central midfield inadequacies, but there is very good reason for
that. As already stated, there is still time for him to turn this all around,
but the Brazilian is presently looking at being one of Ferguson’s expensive failures in the transfer
market.
6. Kleberson
Transfer fee paid: £5.9 million
Transfer fee received: £2.5 million
Kleberson, a World-Cup winner from 2002, arrived at United
in the summer of 2003 and was presented to the media at the same time as an 18
year-old Portuguese winger who went by the name of Cristiano Ronaldo. Attending
the same press briefing and wearing the red shirt however, was where the
similarities between the two players ended. Kleberson was signed as a
replacement for Juan Sebastian Veron - a name that may well appear again on
this list – and had even less luck than his forebear in cementing a place in
United’s central midfield. The Brazilian made only 30 appearances and scored
only twice before being sold to Besiktas in the summer of 2005.
5. Bébé
Transfer fee paid: £7.4 million
Again, like Anderson,
criticising a player that is so young (21) may eventually backfire on me and he
may turn out to be the next Ronaldo, you never know. But, at this moment in
time, Ferguson
has paid almost £7.5 million for a player he could have purchased for a few
hundred thousand pounds sterling had he acted a few weeks earlier. The
Portuguese occasionally featured last season, inspiring few along the way of
why Ferguson
had bought him in the first place. Yet he was still able to, at my immense
shock, be near the front of the team bus when the Premier League trophy was
paraded through Manchester
in May of this year. How and why I asked, and continue to ask myself. Bébé was
loaned out to Besiktas for this season, but has suffered a cruciate ligament
injury that will keep him out for six months, consequently meaning he will
continue to go down as one of Ferguson’s
poorest purchases.
4. Ralph Milne
Transfer fee paid: £170,000
Transfer fee received: Free
Like Prunier, this entry will no doubt have many of you
scratching your heads and saying, “Eh??”. But Milne is in this list, and very
high up to say the least, because Ferguson
himself has said that the midfielder was the worst buy of his tenure at United!
Speaking at an LMA dinner in November 2009, Ferguson said, “My worst signing? Ralph
Milne. I only paid £170,000 but I still get condemned for it." How can you
argue with that? Well, I will, because here is my top three…
3. Diego Forlan
Transfer fee paid: £7.5 million
Transfer fee received: Around £3 million
“He came from Uruguay, he made the Scousers
cry!”, as the chant goes. But, in truth, the brace scored at Anfield was pretty
much the ONLY meaningful thing that Diego Forlan ever did during 2 and a half
years at Old Trafford. That and forget to put his shirt back on after
celebrating a goal against Chelsea.
His statistics of just 17 goals in almost 100 appearances is absolutely woeful
for a striker, and he was quickly sold to Villarreal in the summer of 2004, where
he regained his form and class in front of goal. He has since earned big-money
moves to both Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan, whilst at international level,
he has formed a magnificent strike-partnership with Luis Suarez for Uruguay. He has
proved himself to be a brilliant player, but he just couldn’t play in England and must go down as one of Ferguson’s worst buys.
2. Juan Sebastian Veron
Transfer fee paid: £28.1 million
Transfer fee received: £15 million
As must his South American compatriot, Juan Sebastian Veron,
comfortably the most expensive failure that Ferguson has ever undertaken. I maintain
that, like Forlan, who has proved himself to be a great player in his
post-United career, Veron was a truly brilliant playmaker, but he just could
not play in the English top flight. People often say of foreign imports into
the Premier League that they take time to adapt to the style and pace of the
English game, a vastly different proposition to what is found in the top-flight
leagues of the European continent. Veron, however, NEVER got used to the style
of play in England
and was never given the time and space on the ball he craved in order to
succeed. Ferguson
once famously claimed, using rather colourful language that Veron was a great
player and would prove every single doubter wrong. In spite of this, he was
sold to Chelsea
in 2004, where he had an even worse spell in English football.
1. Massimo Taibi
Transfer fee paid: £4.5 million
Transfer fee received: £2.5 million
The Blind Ventian is, without question, the worst player
that Sir Alex Ferguson has ever bought for Manchester United. Given that he
came with a price tag of £4.5 million, which was a lot of money in 1999, and
given that United were in the process of replacing Peter Schmeichel – no mean
feat in and of itself – Taibi was bought specifically to fight it out with both
Raimond Van Der Gouw and Mark Bosnich for the number one jersey, the former of
which was not happy about. However, it was the goalkeeping
blunders of Taibi, the most famous of which can be seen at 1:40 in this video
against Southampton - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esFAGx7RDL4 - that makes
him Ferguson’s worst ever purchase. After so many years of Schmeichel giving so
many assured performances, this nervousness in between the posts was a major
shock, one that took United over five years to properly get over. The fact that
Taibi only made four league appearances for club before he was sold to Reggina,
somehow for £2.5 million, demonstrates eloquently how quickly Ferguson realised the sheer scope of the
error he had made in signing the Italian. Arrivederci Massimo!
Source : http://footballspeak.com
Posted : December 2011
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