Gary Neville believes just two of Manchester United’s signings over the past nine years have proven to be a success.
United have been heavily criticised for their dealings in the transfer market since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013. The club have spent over £1billion over the past nine years, but have very little success to show for it.
Former United captain Neville collated all of the signings made by United since the summer of 2013 – their first without Ferguson in charge – to analyse how many had proven to be a success. The former defender categorised the signings into green, amber and red sections in order to show their level of success.
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Of the 33 signings made by the club, just two were deemed by Neville to have been a success – Bruno Fernandes and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Seven more – Ander Herrera, Luke Shaw, Nemanja Matic, Fred, Harry Maguire, Edinson Cavani and Cristiano Ronaldo – were placed in the amber section, while the remaining 24 players were deemed to have been a failure.
“One of the problems Manchester United have had for 10 years is that they’ve flip-flopped from managers, strategies and they’ve allowed managers to control recruitment, and that’s a massive issue,” Neville told Sky Sports.
“We think there’s only two signings at this moment in time that you can say have been good and performed at a decent level. You can argue that [Bruno] Fernandes has gone off the boil a little but the numbers that he hit in the last few seasons has worked.
“[Zlatan] Ibrahimovic worked. Amber: Herrera, Shaw - we debated over Shaw - Matic, we debated over Juan Mata who is in red but could’ve been in amber, Cristiano Ronaldo would’ve been green on last season but what’s happened in the last month in terms of he wants to leave, it’s a nightmare scenario, it’s not working.
“75 per cent of those signings are in red, they’ve not worked. 20 per cent are an amber and only four (or) five per cent of signings, we think, have worked. That is a horror story from a recruitment point of view.”
Neville added: “However, there’s a call for blaming the players and we’ve blamed the players over the years. I was excited about a lot of those signings as many people were, even last year with [Rapahael] Varane, [Jadon] Sancho, Ronaldo. [Angel] Di Maria came and we all went, 'ooh he’ll be a good signing', we did it on Monday Night Football at Leicester when he went through midfield.
“But it’s become a graveyard for football players this football club, where football players are now considering to even come to the club, they can’t get players in. When a school is underperforming for years they get put under special measures by the government and the kids don’t get blamed - that’s where Man United are. They’re in special measures and you can’t blame the kids anymore.”
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