The contents of this post cannot be viewed as definitive, because we can only go off the information which is in the public domain. There has been occasions for a variety of reasons, when the buying and or selling club do not want to publish the actual transfer fees; take the case of Nani and Anderson, as far as we know and according to Reuters, United have agreed to pay their respective club's up to £17.3m each, but the figures have never been confirmed in part no doubt due to certain conditions in the players contract being met.
Irrespective of 100% accurate hard facts, especially concerning deals at the lower end of the scale, our information can used as a broad outline of what has actually happened in the last six seasons since the Glazer family takeover.
In an earlier post we outlined Ferguson dealings for the whole of his 24 year period in charge of United, but at the time of writing, we haven't yet added the date column to that post. However, what we do know is that from the late 90s to 2005 the United manager spent heavily and often.
Fergie routinely broke transfer records prior to 1998; the transfer fees for players like Keane (£3.75) and Ince (£1m) look modest at today's prices. Ferguson, really started spending heavily when he acquired Stam in 1998. What followed was yet another golden period of success in which United won that historic treble; but while money will always be a major factor when it comes to success and winning trophies at at club like United it is only one weapon in the manager's armoury.
Events have proven that some of Fergie's biggest transfers have proven to be gambles; the case of Juan Veron is the most obvious, by common consensus, his time in English football was a low point in his otherwise brilliant career. You could also question the value of Berbatov up and until the current season, but thankfully he is now coming good.
Even though transfer fees have rocketed since the late 90s, Fergie has always been prepared to break records in pursuit of glory, but this situation appears to have changed markedly in the last two seasons when Ferguson has often bemoaned 'lack of value' in the transfer market. One can only come to the conclusion that Ferguson has been told he can no longer compete at the higher end of the market.
When you look at the two sets of figures below, they also highlight the high turnover of players - which in itself is startling - the failure rate will be the same at many leading clubs, but it highlights just how difficult it is to make it at United.
IF you look at our figures, Fergie has spent just over £6m per season (net), which is quite remarkable given the success the club has enjoyed since 2005. Hopefully, this perceived lack of value will not hinder the manager when the search for new blood starts again next summer when a major clear-out is anticipated.
Incoming transfers since the takeover in 2005...
| IN 2010-2011 | Transfer Fee | Date |
| Javier Hernandez | £10,000,000 | 15/07/2010 |
| Bebe | £7,400,000 | 11/08/2010 |
| Anders Lindegaard | £3,500,000 | 01/01/2011 |
| 2009-2010 | ||
| Antonio Valencia | £16,000,000 | 30/06/2009 |
| Michael Owen | Free | 03/07/2009 |
| Gabriel Obertan | £3,000,000 | 08/07/2009 |
| Chris Smalling | £10,000,000 | 01/07/2010 |
| Mame Biram Diouf | Undisclosed | 17/07/2009 |
| 2008-2009 | ||
| Dimitar Berbatov | £30,750,000 | 01/09/2008 |
| Zoran Tosic | Undisclosed | 01/01/2009 |
| Ritchie de Laet | Undisclosed | 08/01/2009 |
| Rafael da Silva | Undisclosed | 01/07/2008 |
| Fabio da Silva | Undisclosed | 02/07/2008 |
| 2007-2008 | ||
| *Carlos Tevez | FREE | 04/08/2007 |
| Manucho Petro | Undisclosed | 01/01/2008 |
| 2006-2007 | ||
| Michael Carrick | £18,600,000 | 31/07/2006 |
| Owen Hargreaves | £17,000,000 | 01/07/2007 |
| Anderson | £17,300,000 | 02/07/2007 |
| Tomasz Kuszczak | Undisclosed | 02/07/2007 |
| Nani | £17,300,000 | 02/07/2007 |
| 2005-2006 | ||
| Ji-Sung Park | £4,000,000 | 05/07/2005 |
| Ben Foster | £1,000,000 | 19/07/2005 |
| Nemanja Vidic | £7,000,000 | 04/01/2006 |
| Patrice Evra | £5,500,000 | 10/01/2006 |
| Total | £168,350,000 |
*United reportedly had to pay the Carlos Tevez camp £10m for his two year loan spell, however, this figure has not been included in our figures.
| Outgoing transfers 2010-2011 | Transfer Fee | Date |
| David Gray | Free | 16/07/2010 |
| Craig Cathcart | Undisclosed | 11/08/2010 |
| Rodrigo Possebon | Undisclosed | 19/08/2010 |
| James Chester | Undisclosed | 07/01/2011 |
| 2009-2010 | ||
| Cristiano Ronaldo | £80,000,000 | 01/07/2009 |
| Daniel Galbraith | Free | 01/07/2009 |
| Lee Martin | Ipswich | 06/07/2009 |
| Fraizer Campbell | £3,500,000 | 11/07/2009 |
| Carlos Tevez | No fee | 14/07/2009 |
| Richard Eckersley | Burnley | 15/07/2009 |
| Manucho | Undisclosed | 01/08/2009 |
| Danny Simpson | Undisclosed | 20/01/2010 |
| Ben Foster | £6,000,000 | 18/05/2010 |
| Zoran Tosic | Undisclosed | 15/06/2010 |
| Tom Heaton | Free | 16/06/2010 |
| Robert Zieler | Free | 01/07/2010 |
| 2008-2009 | ||
| Michael Lea | Free | 04/07/2008 |
| Ritchie Jones | Free | 04/07/2008 |
| Chris Eagles | Undisclosed | 29/07/2008 |
| Mikael Silvestre | Free | 20/08/2008 |
| Louis Saha | FREE | 01/09/2008 |
| 2007-2008 | ||
| Kieran Richardson | £5,500,000 | 16/07/2007 |
| Giuseppe Rossi | Undisclosed | 31/07/2007 |
| Daniel Rose | Undisclosed | 01/08/2007 |
| Alan Smith | £6,000,000 | 03/08/2007 |
| Gabriel Heinze | Undisclosed | 23/08/2007 |
| Phil Marsh | Free | 05/09/2007 |
| Adam Eckersley | Free | 01/01/2008 |
| Ryan Shawcross | £1,000,000 | 17/01/2008 |
| Phil Bardsley | £2,000,000 | 22/01/2008 |
| Kieran Lee | Free | 22/05/2008 |
| Gerard Pique | £5,000,000 | 27/05/2008 |
| 2006-2007 | ||
| Ebanks-Blake | £200,000 | 14/07/2006 |
| Quinton Fortune | Free | 26/07/2006 |
| Van Nistelrooy | £11,000,000 | 28/07/2006 |
| Luke Steele | Undisclosed | 11/08/2006 |
| Paul McShane | FREE | 23/08/2006 |
| Liam Miller | Free | 31/08/2006 |
| David Jones | £1,000,000 | 04/01/2007 |
| Tim Howard | £3,000,000 | 14/02/2007 |
| 2005-2006 | ||
| Daniel Nardiello | Free | 25/06/2005 |
| Paul Tierney | Signed | 29/06/2005 |
| Michael Stewart | Signed | 30/06/2005 |
| Phil Neville | £3,500,000 | 04/08/2005 |
| Jose Kleberson | £2,500,000 | 08/08/2005 |
| Roy Keane | Free | 15/12/2005 |
| David Fox | Free | 20/01/2006 |
| Colin Heath | Signed | 31/01/2006 |
| Neil Wood | Free | 31/01/2006 |
| Phil Picken | Free | 25/05/2006 |
| Tommy Lee | Free | 04/06/2006 |
| Jonathan Spector | £500,000 | 15/06/2006 |
| Eddie Johnson | Free | 23/06/2006 |
| Total | £130,700,000 |
http://www.transferleague.co.uk/premiership-transfers/manchester-united-transfers.html
ReplyDeleteThis site does a decent job of keeping track of transfer expenditure of all PL teams. The transfer league table showing net spend had won me a couple of arguments against Liverpool fans.
Reyals,
ReplyDeleteThanks. I have just looked at your link and there appears to be a few errors.
Firstly, the Tosic fee was never confirmed but according to TL it was £5m...that figure cannot be relied upon.
Secondly, the fees for Anderson and Nani were reported by Reuters to be £17.3m apiece; TL suggests considerably less and I know which source is more credible...
With that stated, I've noticed we have no figures for Diouf so that is our bad...
We need to add the Da Silva twins too...
ReplyDeleteReyals,
ReplyDeleteWe have added the missing players, however, in all three cases the fee was undisclosed....
...so the figures were unaffected from the original post.
ReplyDeletePlease report any futher omissions or errors.
ReplyDelete