Sir Alex Ferguson loves the old mind games and it seems that his opposing manager today, Rafael Benitez, hasn’t quite got the hang of them yet. Well, it has only been four years. When Ferguson spoke of his surprise for Robbie Keane’s price tag, a sentiment echoed by most people in the know where football is concerned, Rafa obviously felt a bit of a fool. Afterall, Fernando Torres only cost a few million more than Keane, highlighting all too clearly that Liverpool paid over the odds for the Irish striker.
“Alex should think about how much they spend every year,” Benitez said. “Maybe he feels Berbatov was cheap because they pay £30million for a lot of players and £20million for the majority of them. In our last game against them they had Owen Hargreaves, Carlos Tevez and Nani on the bench – that’s £70million. But if I leave Fernando Torres or Keane on the bench, people are asking questions. If they leave those three on the bench you don’t hear anyone saying anything.”
Poor, misinformed Benitez. If he had done his research (like I have) then he wouldn’t be spouting such nonsense in the press. If we look at last season:
25 players have represented United (not including the League Cup match where several of our youngsters got a run out), nine of them have come from our youth team, seven of them cost £7 million or less, and nine of them were big-money players. Fergie has the perfect balance of youth products, bargains and expensive signings.
I imagine it would also be fairly interesting for Benitez to read that the spending between United and Liverpool over the past 10 years is fairly comparable.
This is again taken from last season, not accounting for the money both clubs have spent this summer.
£34 million. That’s the difference in spending between Manchester United and Liverpool over the past ten years, averaging out at little more than £3 million a season. Whilst United have spent £298 million in the transfer market, an average of £29-£30 million a year, the dippers have spent £264 million, an average of £26-£27 million a year.
Back to the drawing board, Rafa!
Man Utd News 24/7
Tevez cost £32mil wages included.
We haven’t bought Tevez yet have we?
Buying well gets harder when you have to find – and then pay for – “the last piece of the puzzle”, which is exactly what happened a few weeks ago when Levy knew that he had SAF over a barrel and kept the jeopardy pressure on high right until the last hour.
The scatter-gun approach that has characterized most of L/pool’s signings over the past decade was only evident at OldTrafford in the dismal years when Djemba-Djemba, Kleberson, and Forlan were purchased on the cheap. In each case, it seemed like a good idea at the time but very quickly it became obvious that you get what you pay for.
Evra/Vidic were the product of the scouting department while Van der Sar was just a brilliant bit of improvisation. The rest of UTD’s recent acquisitions have been rather like shooting fish-in-a-barrel. Hargreaves, Anderson, Nani, Tevez, Berbatov, and Carrick were all very highly-rated players whose value reflected the professional opinion that they were “valuable commodities” and UTD have gotten what they paid for in paying the “fair market value” for them.
What’s been interesting about UTD’s up-market signings has been that they have been accompanied by a very large number of very cheeky youth acquisitions – Kieran Richardson was snipped from West Ham, Gerard Pique was stolen from Barcelona, and Giovanni Rossi was likewise acquired from an Italian Serie A team (which one ?). None of these guys were deemed to be first-team quality but they were sold on for a combined sum of about twenty million quid. More recently, UTD have added the Da Silva twins and Possebon as well as Macheda and the kid from Roma that was signed this summer. I have high hopes for the twins and, especially, Possebon whose poise – if nothing else – reminds me of Der Kaiser; I think that Rodrigo could be an incredible player. The main point here, though, is that you would be hard-pressed to name a player (since Gerrard/Carragher) who has emerged at Liverpool from their youth system. People in glass houses !!!!
^^ its ‘giuseppe’ rossi mate
the team being parma
RIght, Anant, “Giuseppe Rossi”; my mistake. Any comment of substance ?
Rafa’s a cunt. He seems to overlook the fact that our outlay on the aformentioned players delivered us the Premiership and European Cup last season, not to mention all of them despatching our penalties in the European Cup final. Money well spent in that respect. He spent 26million on Torres who won fuck all at club level.