EPL: Manchester United’s decade of big spending with little return

Manchester United generate the most revenue and spend the most money in football. But as MARTIN SAMUEL writes, the last decade has little to show for it.

For all the money spent, Manchester United have little to show in recent years. Picture: Oli SCARFF / AFP

Stan: I got a dollars 100 cheque from my grandma, and my dad said I need to put it in a bank so it can grow over the years.

Banker: A really smart decision, young man, we can put that cheque in a money-market mutual fund and (tapping computer) we’ll reinvest the earnings into a foreign currency account with compounding interest, and … it’s gone.

South Park, season 13, episode 3, Margaritaville

Pretty much like running Manchester United, then.

We’ll just take this £90 million, invest it in a French midfielder we let go for nothing some years previously, and … it’s gone. We’ll take this Brazilian in pretty much the same position, even if the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi thinks the market’s too expensive, and … it’s gone. We’ll buy Arsenal’s centre forward who’s been in a strop for several years and nothing’s ever his fault and … it’s gone.

Across ten years, just over £1 billion. Gone. And this doesn’t include bonuses for the Glazers, or their lieutenants so expertly presiding over the expenditure. The biggest net spend in football, down the tubes. In that period, more than Paris Saint- Germain, more than Chelsea, more than Barcelona. And, look, United have got it and they’ve flaunted it, and good luck to them for that. No club have spent money quite like they have since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson, but those numbers really aren’t the problem. Nor is the return, from an outsider’s perspective.

Erik ten Hag is the latest Manchester United manager to try to turn big spending into trophies. Picture: Glyn KIRK / AFP

Yet what do the numbers represent? That matters.

Run well, United should have dominated English football through the sheer size of their revenue streams, the money they can then afford to spend and the limitations imposed around them by Financial Fair Play. That’s what the rules were intended to do. Keep the biggest on top, stifle the upstarts. When critics say United haven’t got a plan, they are talking on the field. Off the field, they’ve got a great one. They just didn’t execute it well enough.

The bang for the buck at Old Trafford has been distinctly underwhelming. Certainly, ten digits down, they would have expected to be more than the decent cup team they were when Ron Atkinson was in charge. The FA Cup; the League Cup, twice; the Europa League, across ten years. These are all decent trophies and days for celebration and Tottenham Hotspur, and many below, would certainly have settled for it.

But even so: £1 billion, net. Where has it all gone? They would have wished for a few league titles, surely, or the biggest European trophy, rather than winning its feeder tournament. They would have hoped to be sitting where Manchester City are now.

And that will be the argument, while City linger in the Premier League’s dock. United spent a billion and still couldn’t keep pace with City, or their accountants. We’ll see.

Yet this also ignores the fact that Leicester City, Liverpool and Chelsea won the league, and Bayern Munich won the Champions League, all in years when City fell short. Teams passed City; just not United. There was no focus, no project, no philosophy. United spent £1 billion on players. Some worked, some didn’t. Some went together, some came apart. It is hard to look at United’s squad at any time, even now, and see a strategy.

And aren’t we lucky for that? Imagine if United had been coherently run. Imagine if that £1 billion had been put to efficient use. United would have dominated perhaps more surely than they did in Ferguson’s time. They would have swept the field aside. No one could have kept up with them.

So there was a plan. It just wasn’t a plan that necessarily involved smart recruitment. It was a political plan. Financial regulation was always going to give United more money than any other club in English football but, from there, they messed up. They could spend £1 billion without falling foul of Financial Fair Play, but spent it so haphazardly they still couldn’t win the league.

Fred is another expensive Manchester United signing yet to bring major success. Picture: Stu Forster/Getty Images

It’s a near-miss for the rest, have no doubt of that. That £1 billion demonstrates the colossal power of United, and how far ahead they could be, if capably directed. They genuinely have £1 billion to waste. It has been absorbed into their numbers and only recently has there been a murmur about making the balance sheet compliant.

Yet even in a summer when outlay has been restricted, United have still spent more than £160 million. And the suitors vying to buy the club know what they are getting too. The expanded Club World Cup will aid globalisation, a World Cup in the US will direct even more eyeballs towards the sport. No one contemplating football’s future envisions United getting smaller. If the Premier League ever allows clubs to negotiate individual television rights, United should run away with the league each year, as Bayern have in Germany. If they ever get it right, watch out.

Yet the plan hasn’t worked to here. Veering erratically on managers, personnel, styles of play – we are now supposed to laud a United team who barely leave their own half away from home – this enormous sum has been squandered. Fred, £52 million; Angel Di Maria, £59.7 million; Jadon Sancho, £73 million; Romelu Lukaku, £75 million; Harry Maguire, £80 million; Paul Pogba, £89 million.

And … it’s gone. Fortunately, they can afford it.

-The Times

Originally published as EPL: Manchester United’s decade of big spending with little return