The transfer window closed last night to a fanfare of angry, confused and bewildered tweets flying around Twitter as fast as people’s fingers could type. In the end, saying it wasn’t a very pretty window would be an understatement. We signed only one player – a player who cost us 4.5m more than he had to if we had just pulled the trigger a few weeks earlier before his release clause expired. It was a frantic last 24 hours and a lot of lessons were learned. Below are my 5 takeaways from this summer’s transfer window.  |
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1. It’s no surprise, but waiting until the last minute to do transfer business is almost never beneficial. Moyes had been coy all summer stating that he was looking to bring in some players, but that he felt comfortable with the players that he had. A page out of Fergie’s book, but on deadline day, the hectic nature of how we conducted our business seemed to suggest otherwise. If Fellaini was a legit target all summer, we should have triggered his release clause and moved on to other business. We ended up signing Fellaini at the 11th hour and completely botched the transfer of Ander Herrera. If the Fellaini business had been taken care of weeks ago, we could have secured Herrera long before yesterday, successfully hurdling the complicated Spanish tax laws that deterred us from signing him at the last minute.
2. If you try to sign a player and the bid is continually rejected, just stop. I lost count of how many bids we had for Fabregas, even after they said he wasn’t leaving and the player himself said he was happy in Spain. While he and Fellaini are completely different players, the desperate attempts to sign Fabregas, to me, sent a message we needed someone in after all. Fast forward to last night where we were forced, at the very last minute, to overpay for a player we could’ve had weeks ago.
3. Last year, before Evra turned his act around, I was an advocate for bringing in someone like Baines. I wasn’t over the moon for Baines, but if we could get him cheap enough last year, I was all for it. However, we’ve needed a MF for years and the continued attempt to sign Baines (and Coentrao at the last minute) was a totally misguided avenue and one I’m still a little perplexed by. What kind of message does that send to Evra? And, what kind of message does it send that, while we’re clamoring for a MF, you’re looking to bring in a left back when we really don’t need one? The answer? Not a good one.
4. No one is immune to growing pains. I’ll advocate for Moyes as long as he’s our manager. Unless something catastrophically bad happens and it was his doing, you’ll never hear or see me utter the phrase “Moyes out,” like some of our rival teams’ fans have done in abundance over the last 18 or so months. I will say that Moyes isn’t an unseasoned manager. With his appointment basically chosen by SAF himself, I expected a much more focused and fruitful transfer window. Woodward as CEO is probably to blame for most of it, but in the end, we’re Manchester United and stuff like what happened yesterday should never have happened. I hope it served as an eye-opening lesson because if something like that happens again, some people will be without their jobs.
5. Forget all the botched transfers we had this past window. It’s over and let’s move on. Fellaini, while some think he’s not worth 27.5m, is the kind of player I think we need in the MF with Carrick. While Carrick had arguably his best season last year, we still knew we needed someone to partner with him. Cleverley played well in a dismal performance at Anfield, but Fellaini is the type of player to grab a hold of the MF and help dictate the tempo and flow of the game. To say we’ve been poor on aerial balls in the last few seasons would be an understatement. Fellaini brings the ability to win the balls in the air, hold up play and be a nasty boss in the MF, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Roy Keane. Will he solve all our problems? Most likely not, but he does fill a very specific void we’ve been looking to address for years. Forget the pricetag. If he helps us win another title, it’ll be just as good an investment as 24m for RVP last year.
