It's been a terrible decade for Manchester United and Gary Neville made it clear just how bad it's been when he broke down the club's horrendous success rate in the transfer window since 2013 on Monday.
While dissecting yet another humiliating United performance, after they were humbled 4-0 by Brentford on Saturday, Neville and Jamie Carragher analysed all the signings the club has made since Sir Alex Ferguson retired. While Ferguson by no means had a 100 per cent hit-rate in the market, he certainly recruited more successes than failures which hasn't been the case for the club since he left the hot seat.
Not including this summer's additions of Tyrell Malacia, Christian Eriksen and Lisandro Martinez, Neville put the other 33 permanent signings United have made over the last nine years into one of three categories: green for success, amber for okay and red for failure. Only two players made it into the green, while an astonishing 24 were in the red.
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Bruno Fernandes and Zlatan Ibrahimovic were the only two signings to be regarded as successes by Neville, while Ander Herrera, Luke Shaw, Nemanja Matic, Fred, Harry Maguire, Edinson Cavani and Cristiano Ronaldo were all rated amber.
Below, MEN Sport writers have debated on which of Neville's ratings they agree and disagree with.
Samuel Luckhurst
It typifies United's recruitment in the last nine-year period that Neville's only 'greens' have caveats. Ibrahimovic's second season was an unmitigated disaster (remember Burnley on Boxing Day?) and Fernandes has been out of form for around a year.
That said, they deserve to get the green light. Cristiano Ronaldo should be in there, too; 24 goals in 38 games, two player of the month awards, inclusion in the PFA Team of the Year and another Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year award. The rancour this summer should not relegate him to amber when he is railing against a defeatist culture.
Luke Shaw, Harry Maguire and Edinson Cavani have to be in the red. Shaw has had one good season in eight, Maguire improved United for a season, had a reasonable second season and was a walking disaster in the third; that does not represent sound value on an £80million investment. Cavani was terrific in the 2020-21 run-in but even in that season he was picking and choosing when to play and his second campaign was Ibrahimovic-esque, minus the desire to play.
Juan Mata and Marouane Fellaini are worthy of amber status, as is Daley Blind. Blind had a decent first season, a good second season and his third was bookended with terrific spells of form. His fourth was a write-off but he started in the FA Cup and Europa League final wins.
Strange but true: Blind has been a better centre-back for United than Maguire, Eric Bailly, Victor Lindelof and Raphael Varane.
Richard Fay
Exercises like this are always going to greatly divide opinion and cause a social media storm, but the bottom line is that United's recruitment policy has been woeful since the summer of 2013.
In my opinion, you have to take into account the mitigation of the transfer at time - did they improve a previous problem in the squad? - and how much was paid for them to fairly judge each deal.
Fernandes and Ibrahimovic are both greens given that they gave United exactly what they were missing at the time and raised the standards for a year each, even if they then faded out.
Mata and Fellaini are both worthy of the amber field, given the service United got out of them both and the impact the duo both had on the rare high points experienced since Sir Alex Ferguson retired.
James was signed for just £15m and was an effective squad player, though he was exposed by their failure to sign a proper forward and was used far more often than he should have been. He deserves to be an amber given that there was little expectation and he did better than most expected, even with his shortfalls.
I feel there has been plenty of revisionism surrounding Blind in recent years, but he is still worthy of the amber bracket given he was signed for just under £14m. The same can be said for Lindelof, who, although he isn't an elite centre-back, is still a worthy back-up and has given the club plenty of service at the back for the fee that was paid.
Daniel Murphy
I think Neville was a tad harsh to brandish some of the earlier signings in the time period as an utter failure. Juan Mata's tenure may have fizzled out and he certainly was never as good as he should have been at Old Trafford after years of being wasted out wide, but he still had some amazing performances and was key in the club's last trophy wins. Daley Blind was also a good servant and, though he didn't play well for a long period, Daniel James is the one player United have actually made money on in the last decade so I would move all three to amber. Jadon Sancho, too, as the jury is still out on him.
But those bodies will certainly be replaced by players moving down from amber. Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed goals last season but his unplanned arrival disrupted everything Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was working towards and made the team worse. Add this summer's fiasco to that and the signing and the signing has backfired.
Harry Maguire and Fred have been humungous wastes of money, have never come close to living up to their price tags and their continued places in the starting XI despite nothing but failure shows how little United have come. While he had a good first season and came on a free, Cavani's penchant for taking time off in South America and in the treatment room meant he never capitalised on that start. All three should be down in red as well.
Likewise, Bruno Fernandes has struggled to recapture his blistering start since over the last 12 months while Zlatan Ibrahimovic's last season was mired with injury. I would move both down to amber but shift Ander Herrera, a player United should have kept, up to green.
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