How Attractive Are Manchester United to Players After Another Turbulent Season?

When David Moyes’ Manchester United failed to reach the UEFA Champions League, there was a good deal of speculation as to the calibre of players the club would be able to attract.

Would the game’s finest—for whom United were finally in the market in terms of stated transfer policy—be prepared to spend a season out of Europe’s elite competition?

The answer turned out to be yes. Angel Di Maria had been man of the match in the 2013/14 Champions League final, but he was prepared to skip a year for the sake of joining the Red Devils.

Daley Blind and Marcos Rojo had starred at the World Cup, while Radamel Falcao had been among the best strikers in the world before his injury, but all three signed for United that summer.

The Di Maria and Falcao stories in particular did not have happy endings, but the key lesson would appear to be that at least some players were prepared to take the gamble for the sake of adding Old Trafford to their resume.

In some ways, the current situation is more favourable in terms of attracting players than it was in 2014.

The club have responded to last season’s turbulence with decisive action. Replacing Louis van Gaal with Jose Mourinho is a profound statement of intent.

Mourinho’s is one of the game’s true managerial greats. Van Gaal may have enjoyed that status once, and deservedly so, but the latter part of his career was less kind to him. His time at United saw him run headlong into the limitations of his dogmatism around style of play and relationships with key players.

Of course, we may yet discover that Mourinho is entering an equivalent phase, but there is little evidence of that so far.

Things went wrong at Chelsea last season, but immediately prior to that he had won them their first Premier League title in five years. And acrimonious, political endings have always been a part of his career, as indeed they have been for most Stamford Bridge managers in the Roman Abramovich era.

In 2014, it felt as if the United squad had reached the end of a cycle—Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic all left that summer, for example. The current situation is perhaps more appealing. New arrivals would be joining young players like Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford who could be en route to building something special.

They may have been given a hand by a favourable run of fixtures along the way, but this squad has also proved they can win a trophy by lifting the FA Cup at Wembley in May. Perhaps that will have a positive bearing on those sizing up Old Trafford as a potential destination.

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