It often comes across as churlish to talk about the relatively minor errors made my managerial masters, but amidst the raft of excellence, mistakes will inevitably crop up even for the best in the business.
Pep Guardiola’s magnificent run with Barcelona included the now-infamous €25 million signing of centre-back Dmytro Chygrynskiy as well as misguided moves for Aleksandr Hleb and Martin Caceres worth a total of €36m.
He also managed to make a €53m loss on Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the space of 12 months.
For Arsene Wenger at Arsenal there is a Kaba Diawara for every Thierry Henry, while Jose Mourinho didn’t only sign Didier Drogba, Ricardo Carvalho and Michael Essien for Chelsea… He was also responsible for additions such as Asier del Horno and Maniche as well as the sale of Kevin de Bruyne.
Even Sir Alex Ferguson is not untouchable, with many considering the purchases of players such as Eric Djemba-Djemba, William Prunier, Massimo Taibi and, most pointedly, Bebe as examples that the Scot was as fallible as any other manager in the market.
And while his transfer record undoubtedly goes down in the annals as a very positive one overall, there can be few moves in the history of the game which reflect so badly on a decision than Paul Pogba’s return to Manchester United does on Ferguson’s choice to let him leave Old Trafford four years ago.
It was fairly clear within a few months of Pogba arriving at Juventus that United would be left kicking themselves, but the true cost of Ferguson’s belligerence over the French midfielder has only been quantified this summer in the way of his £93.8m move back to Manchester.
Ferguson spoke of the difficulties with Pogba and his agent Mino Raiola in his 2015 book ‘Leading’, explaining: There are one or two football agents I simply do not like, and Mino Raiola is one of them.
We had Paul under a three-year contract, and it had a one-year renewal option which we were eager to sign. Raiola suddenly appeared on the scene and our first meeting was a fiasco. He and I were like oil and water.
‘From then our goose was cooked because Raiola had been able to ingratiate himself with Paul and his family and the player signed with Juventus.’