WHY SAY ANYTHING?

In the dim and distant past Manchester United had relatively few problems in enticing players to sign for them.

Pre-Fergie it was the lure of the name. It also helped that, in 1968, they had become the first English club to win the European Cup, although Sir Matt Busby made relatively few signings after that famous night at Wembley, a fact which was a constant source of annoyance to George Best.

Best expected the team to grow and prosper from that night on. Instead, Busby stuck with the older players and United won nothing of note again until the FA Cup defeat of Liverpool in 1977.

Anyway, back to the point. The only real competition in those days was Liverpool. They were signing a lot of good players in general and, it seemed, all the best Scottish players of the time including Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Alan Hansen. United did get Lou Macari, but he would have been fourth choice out of the aforementioned players.

Manchester City, believe it or not, were briefly competing in the transfer market and were, even in those days, spending millions on players who were simply not worth the money. Apart from City fans, who remembers Kevin Reeves and Steve Daley? Yet these are players who cost more than a million pounds back when a million pounds was a lot of money!

In today’s multi-million pound market there are a lot more participants with a lot more money.

The market is also world-wide, not insular as it used to be. Buying a player from outside of the UK was, whilst not unheard of, very unusual back in the day. Now, thanks to the prohibitive cost of average English players, it is the norm.

Whilst Manchester United still have the name, the history of winning titles and the “wow!” factor, they are not alone and face competition for players from clubs around Europe, not just in the north-west of England. Even some of those pesky London clubs have a few bob now and are muscling in on the act!

When a good player becomes available to buy there will be several clubs in the queue for his services. It is also the case that, when a world class player becomes available, there will still be two or three clubs in the race for his signature. It is less likely, in this day and age, that a club will be able to buy a top player without a fight.

Having said all that, Ed Woodward should no longer be a novice at the transfer game. By now he should have fathomed out how it all works. Having spent his formative months overpaying for the overrated Angel Di Maria, who was sold at a massive loss just a few months later, (we told you so, Ed), and having overspent on Marouane Fellaini by missing his “buy-by” date he then went on to take two transfer windows in signing Ander Herrera. Now, we accept that dealing with Athletic Bilbao is akin to dealing with Daniel Levy with a gun, but two windows?

As if to try and prove that lessons had been learned from these experiences, Ed moved quickly this time out to secure the services of Victor Lindelof from Benfica. But did he? Move quickly, we mean. Victor Lindelof was a target in the January transfer window and so, yet again, Drag-It-Out Ed has needed two windows to buy a player.

When making these observations, we here at WSA do accept that the transfer window is not yet officially open and that any signings announced presently will all have signed post-dated contracts. Consequently, we are prepared to cut Ed a little slack and wait to see what happens in the next couple of months.

He will, however, have to move pretty quickly if he is to present his manager with his requested signings before the club go on their pre-season tour in July. Mourinho wants to be giving his new players some game-time when they meet LA Galaxy at the Stubhub on the 15th July.

So this is Ed’s challenge. Will he rise to it, or will he buckle under the pressure? Tune in next time for another exciting instalment of Ed’s Adventures in Soccerland.