In this article we look at ten of possibly the worst signings under Alex ferguson at Man United
These players prove that even the greatest manager gets it wrong sometimes – if you are a Man United fan you may remember some of these stars and still wake up in a cold sweat
Players
Ralph Milne – £170,000 from Bristol City
He was a legend at Dundee United but had a few off pitch issues – to put it mildly.
He did have blistering pace in his early career but by the time he signed this had gone due to the aforesaid issues
He played 23 games and did score 3 goals
Fergie revealed that Milne was his worst signing of all time. A lot of the fans agreed to be fair.
Jordi Cruyff – £1.3m from Barcelona
A classic case of a son failing to live up to his fathers name – when its Johann Cruyff you have a bit of an excuse
He only made 34 appearances in 4 years and scored 8 goals. His career was badly affected by injuries to be fair
Cruyff returned to Spain on a free transfer to Alavés
Massimo Taibi – £4.5m from Venezia
Fergie got it right big time with Peter Schmeichel a colossus of a keeper, this was the opposite end of the spectrum
An absolute disaster of a keeper, look at highlights of his Man Utd career on Youtube – especially Matthew Le Tissier ‘shot’ that he slip through his legs and the Chelsea game when they lost 5-0.
Did you know that made his debut against Liverpool with Taibi getting the man of the match award.
Played 4 conceded 11 – many opposition fans wished he had a longer career at United.
In July 2000, Manchester United agreed to allow Taibi to rejoin Reggina for a fee of £2.5 million – a bit of a miracle really
Juan Veron – £28m from Lazio
He struggled to adapt to the pace of the premier league and never seemed that comfortable
He played 51 games and scored 7 goals – so its the price tag that gets him on the list as when you saw him play abroad he looked great but that was in slower paced leagues where he got more time on the ball.
Man Utd managed to offload him to Chelsea for 15 million – he only played 15 games. 43 million in 2 transfers is some achievement, he was arguably worse at Chelsea
Diego Forlan – £6.9m from Independiente
He took 27 games to notch his first goal for Man Utd and had some horrendous misses in his time at the club.
He played 63 times and scored 10 goals and then was sold to to Villareal
To be fair to the player for Uruguay and at Atlético Madrid he was a top talent. Again wrong club at the wrong time.
Eric Djemba-Djemba – £3.5m from Nantes
He played 20 league games and did not score any goals
This guy features in most peoples Man Utds worst ever XI’s.
Djemba-Djemba was sold to Aston Villa in the January 2005 transfer window for a fee of £1.5 million – which says a lot about Villa
Kleberson – £6.5m from Paranaense
He was a star player in the 2002 World Cup for Brazil with their manager claiming he was the star man – maybe he had a cut on any transfer or just had a great sense of humour.
Kléberson was injured in his second appearance for the club which was when it started to go wrong for him and made only 20 appearances in two seasons. He scored two league goals in his time at Manchester United
On 6 August 2005, Kléberson signed for Turkish club Beşiktaş for €2.95 million. Again that was some amazing business to get even that.
Dong Fangzhuo – £500,000 from Dalian Shide
Sometimes you can say that a player never lives up to his name – this one did.
Played once for Man Utd – we think. He was unlucky because of permit issues he had to be sent out on loan
On 28 August 2008, Dong and Manchester United mutually agreed that his contract was to be terminated
Bebe – £7.4m from Vittoria de Guimaraes
Alex Ferguson admitted he had never seen Bebé play. That was obvious to those that had the misfortune that did.
He played a grand total of 2 games – 3.7 million per game what a bargain.
On 25 July 2014, it was confirmed that Bebé had signed for Benfica, for a fee rumoured to be worth up to €3 million.
Wilfried Zaha – £15m from Crystal Palace
He only played 2 times for Man Utd which considering his promise was a real surprise
To be fair his career at Crystal Palace has proven that he is a very good player, sometimes it just doesn’t work at another club.
He did signat the end of Ferguson time as a manager and the next manager, David Moyes didn’t seem to fancy him as a player. He was loaned back to Palace
On 2 February 2015, Zaha’s move to Palace was made permanent believed to be in the region of £3 million, rising to £6 million with add-ons
