Manchester United were not afraid to wield their financial might under Sir Alex Ferguson, and they still aren’t now. The difference is that they actually used to sign good players.
The amount of waste in United’s recent history is genuinely staggering, as a look at their most expensive signings of all time makes clear.
We’ll get onto the top ten shortly, but there’s no better place to start than with Manchester United’s biggest-money flop to date…
Who is Manchester United’s most expensive ever signing?
It’s still Paul Pogba, who returned to Old Trafford from Juventus in 2016 having left after just a handful of senior appearances four years prior. £89.3m is a lot of money in football now, let alone in 2016, and the French international carried a huge weight of expectation on his shoulders with United then still not too far removed from their post-Ferguson slump and hopeful and climbing back onto their perch.
Pogba certainly had his moments and good spells – 2018/19 being a highlight – but the club let him leave on a free in 2022 after an overall disappointing six years. He ranks second on our list of United’s worst-ever signings.
Who held the Manchester United transfer record before Paul Pogba?
Angel Di Maria was (appropriately) one of those big-name, big-money Hail Mary signings who have arrived at Old Trafford over the past decade only to prove disappointing.
The £59.7m United paid for the Real Madrid winger was a British club record back in 2014, and actually, things started quite well for Di Maria as he won the club’s Player of the Month and Goal of the Month awards for September.
But that was as good as it got for the Argentine, who had started to struggle even before suffering a mid-season hamstring injury and was outright awful after his return. He left for PSG less than a year after he had arrived.
That about sums up United’s top ten record signings of all time, with an awful lot of money very questionably spent.
The £80m they spent on Harry Maguire in 2019 is probably the pick of the bunch as it stands, which says a lot, though United will be hoping to see more out of £72m signing Rasmus Hojlund over the coming years.
The rest is an incredible amount of “didn’t really work out”, with Romelu Lukaku, Jadon Sancho, Casemiro and Mason Mount all featuring.
Somebody send the board down to Brentford or Brighton to see what a scouting department looks like, we reckon.
Manchester United’s top ten most expensive players of all time
| Player | Fee | Year | Signed from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paul Pogba | £89.3m | 2016 | Juventus |
| Antony | £82m | 2022 | Ajax |
| Harry Maguire | £80m | 2019 | Leicester |
| Romelu Lukaku | £75m | 2017 | Everton |
| Jadon Sancho | £73m | 2021 | Borussia Dortmund |
| Rasmus Hojlund | £72m | 2023 | Atalanta |
| Casemiro | £60m | 2022 | Real Madrid |
| Angel Di Maria | £59.7m | 2014 | Real Madrid |
| Lisandro Martinez | £57m | 2022 | Ajax |
| Mason Mount | £55m | 2023 | Chelsea |
