Manchester United’s record in the transfer market might be on the way to improving itself under Ineos and they’re off to a good start, but the legacy of failures is overwhelming.
There are many expensive players who flopped at Old Trafford, or didn’t live up to the expectations and who else can that discussion start with than the costliest of them all.
Paul Pogba returned to Manchester United in 2016 for a club-record and at-the-time world-record fee of nearly £89 million.
After an encouraging first season, it all started to fall apart and he repeated his free transfer trick by moving to Juventus five years later.
Now, Patrice Evra has made a sensational claim about his transfer to United, questioning the very motivation of it.
Patrice Evra on Paul Pogba’s Manchester United transfer
When Pogba signed, it looked like a no-brainer move even though the fee was undoubtedly quite steep. That is because midfield had been a pain point for a long time and Pogba was a certified Ballon d’Or contender for the future.
However, if Evra is to be believed, United’s motivation for buying him had nothing to do with what he could do on the pitch.
Speaking on The Overlap YouTube channel, Evra has sensationally claimed that Pogba was bought to ‘humiliate Sir Alex Ferguson’ and ‘sell shirts’.
He said: “Manchester United brought Paul Pogba back because they wanted to humiliate Sir Alex Ferguson. I told Paul to not go back because he wanted Real Madrid and Madrid wanted him, but Florentino Pérez didn’t want to pay the money.
“His agent called United, and he signed with him without telling me. The club was happy because they were selling shirts, you know the kids love Pogba – it was more commercial than anything on the pitch.
“It’s not about being a big fan of Paul Pogba, it’s about being his big brother. It’s about protecting him. I was harsh with him when I joined Juventus.”
“I feel like sometimes the press are not being fair with Paul Pogba. I can give you an example of when he played against Liverpool for the first time.
“The night before the game, I was on FaceTime to him, and I saw a lot of people in his room and he was signing shirts, so I asked him if he was ready for the game, and he said that he was.
“I remember that it was one of the worst games he played, so I spoke to him after the game, and he told me that I was right, and he wasn’t focused. But it was his entourage, his entourage let him down.”
Unpacking Evra’s words
Pogba arrived as the most expensive Manchester United player of all time so the fact the press would judge him harshly was a given.
Moreover, Evra contradicts himself, saying that the press was harsh on the player before saying that Pogba accepted he wasn’t focused.
The bit about his entourage keeps cropping up when there are talks about Pogba’s unfulfilled potential but it is up to the player who he wants to keep around himself.
As for United’s motivation for signing him, it is easy to have the benefit of hindsight and say that it was purely commercial, but the fact remains that Pogba was one of the best players in the world when he arrived.
His commercial value was a sidenote to the magical things he could do on the pitch. Of course, he didn’t show it consistently for United but apart from the player not being at it, United hardly made it easy for him with their decisions on squad building or tactical thinking.
Evra’s most sensational claim is that United signed Pogba to humiliate Sir Alex Ferguson, which sounds more like opinion than fact. As derided as the Ed Woodward/Glazer regime was, it is unlikely they would splurge a world-record fee just to antagonise a man not even involved with the day-to-day activities at the club anymore.
Ultimately, the truth is that the move benefitted neither party. Pogba could never regain the heights he achieved at Juventus before coming to United, and the club eventually lost him on a free transfer again with just a single Carabao Cup and a Europa League trophy to show for their club-record outlay.
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