It is now 10 years since Manchester United spent £89 million to sign Paul Pogba.
The deal to sign Paul Pogba in 2016 was a world record transfer fee at the time, and it is still Manchester United’s record spend.
10 years on, Manchester United’s Pogba deal is only the ninth highest spend in the Premier League.
We can leave it to you to judge whether this is a good thing. The massive outlay on Pogba did not meet expectation, and these big money buys rarely do.
Look at Liverpool last summer, who spent a combined £241 million on Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, and managed to get worse.
We hope that is the outcome with Manchester City’s massive spend on Elliot Anderson.
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Elliot Anderson to City
Manchester City are set to spend £130 million to sign Elliot Anderson. It is the second time they have spent £100 million or more on a player. The last one was Jack Grealish.
Chelsea (three), Liverpool (twice), and Arsenal (once), have all outspent Manchester United’s outlay on Pogba.
United have spent in the £80m range since, with Harry Maguire and then Antony, but have never eclipsed the Pogba spend.
It is quite possible that United never do break that barrier. Sir Jim Ratcliffe is on record saying that he does not believe in buying superstars.
United were linked to Elliot Anderson earlier in the summer but refused to get into a bidding war for a player who is quite clearly excessively overpriced.
| Player | Buying Club | Fee | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elliot Anderson | Manchester City | £130m* | 2026 |
| Alexander Isak | Liverpool | £125m | 2025 |
| Florian Wirtz | Liverpool | £116m | 2025 |
| Moisés Caicedo | Chelsea | £115m | 2023 |
| Enzo Fernández | Chelsea | £106.8m | 2023 |
| Declan Rice | Arsenal | £105m | 2023 |
| Jack Grealish | Manchester City | £100m | 2021 |
| Romelu Lukaku | Chelsea | £97.5m | 2021 |
| Paul Pogba | Manchester United | £89.3m | 2016 |
There is a dilemma of course. The fees we are looking at are absolutely obscene and there is no player who is really worth £100 million. Most of the players above have been expensive flops.
But at some point, do Manchester United need to splash out on a player they believe in, and build a team capable of winning the Premier League title?
If United cannot do this without spending big, and the Anderson deal propels City to the title, it will ask questions over whether the Red Devils need to change strategy.
Should Manchester United break the transfer record in summer 2026? Who should we target?
Who has been Manchester United's best and worst big money signings?
The world record transfer fee might never be broken
The world record fee remains the £200 million Paris Saint-Germain spent to sign Neymar in 2017.
This was just one year after Manchester United’s Paul Pogba deal. At that point you wondered where it might end.
The Premier League spending keeps on climbing, and if the Neymar deal is ever broken, it will probably be an English team who does. It just won’t be United.
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