26 Nov 2012

'It was a big jump' - Fergie slates Rodgers over massive transfer failure. Fair?

Last week, Manchester United boss reignited his feud with Rafa Benitez by suggesting the former Reds boss has been historically 'lucky' to inherit teams that have already been successful (Inter and Chelsea). Ferguson has a gift for making scathing comments appear benign (!), and he continued with his LFC-related 'insights' over the weekend with a thinly-veiled attack on LFC's handling of Andy Carroll.

Speaking to Reporters over the weekend, Ferguson criticised Rodgers for his decision to allow Andy Carroll to leave without having a replacement, suggesting that the LFC's boss's inexperience contributed to the collapse of the Clint Dempsey deal. In his usual patronising manner, Fergie explained:

"They [Liverpool] were after Clint Dempsey, that didn't work out, and they had done the deal for Carroll. Maybe it was something they did not expect. With the manager being young, maybe he expected the deal to go through and then it was not there and he had lost a player, too."

I don't think age/inexperience has anything to do with it. Rodgers (correctly) wanted Carroll out, and FSG wouldn't sanction a large bid for a 29-year old player. It was a minor set-back, but it's not as if Dempsey or Carroll are pulling up trees at their respective clubs, is it?

Ultimately, in hindsight, the decisions to dump Carroll and lowball Spurs over Dempsey appear to be correct, although personally, I would've liked to have seen the American at Anfield.

Fergie also stuck the knife in over Liverpool's decision to spend £35m on Carroll in January 2011, and in doing so, displayed the hypocrisy that has defined his reign at United. He said:

"He [Carroll] had to deal with a £35m transfer to a club like Liverpool. When you get to that level of £35m, you need to do a bit more homework and see how he is in the second season, maybe

"He was young and it was quite a big jump for him for that kind of money. We've gambled on young players in the past, a couple of million, something like that".


Ferguson is right about the staggeringly inflated £35m transfer fee, a figure that is still impossible to justify, but he seems to be suffering from amnesia when it comes to United's transfer history.

He claims that United have gambled only 'a couple of million' on young players in the past, but that is total nonsense. Carroll was 22 when he signed for LFC - let's take a look at some of Ferguson's 'couple of million' young-player buys:

* Rooney: £27m (18 years old)
* Anderson: £20m (19 years old)
* Bebe: £8m (20 years old)
* David De Gea: £17m (21 years old)
* Nick Powell: £6m (18 years old)
* Phil Jones: £16.5m (20 years old)

I could make a bigger list but you get the point.

Jaimie Kanwar


72 comments:

  1. Yeah, Borini's injury and Liverpool's (rightful) position in the table suggests offloading Carroll before getting a replacement was a fantastic decission. Please carry on in this manner. The likes of Swansea appreciate it. LOL

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  2. £6m is hardly a large fee for a 29 year old PL player, even if he had only a year left, who was on form the season before. Dempsey might not be doing great now but that is just hindsight logic, which is hardly the most reliable of logic in football. Whose to say he wouldn't be doing better at Liverpool, a different team, different system, different manager, etc. Too many variables in football to simply rely on hindsight judgment. At the end of the day, we have a poor depth of strikers and a experienced PL versatile forward like Dempsey would have been beneficial.

    Ferguson, Wenger, manager x, y, z, etc, being hypocritical. Surprise, surprise(!) ;)

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  3. Slur Alex is many things, a Sportsman is not one of them.

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  4. Yea because Carroll's 1 goal would change everything...

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  5. Haha. Exactly. Carroll would've been a hindrance.

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  6. Old whiskey nose aint my cuppa tea but 35 mil on Carroll was absolutely criminal, when i think of some of the fantastic talent we could have purchased for that sum i could cry me a river

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  7. Sir Alex should focus on his own team n not gossip abt others. At least Rodger stays grounded n avoid talking abt others.

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  8. The emphasis is letting him go BEFORE (and as we now know without) getting a replacement, you bunch of (insert generic derogatory comment to describe a Liverpool fan)

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  9. All Carroll would have done is to allow Suarez to come off towards the end of matches if we were winning. Carroll wouldnt have started games unless Suarez was injured so wouldn't have made too much difference at the moment. Should we lose Suarez then we are in trouble and will have to give one of the young guns a go.

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  10. typical answer from a scouser ! of all the names you names only bebe failed to live up to expectations. so wats it u wanna proof ????? 8 million against 35 million ????? stupid scouser

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  11. one goal this weekend would have been 3 points lol

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  12. Horrendous, just horrendous, the majority of the spending under KK and we're still paying the price for it, i.e., not being able to spend as much now

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  13. maybe but imo he tentimes better than his replacment the one who rodgers spent 12 million on so he did replace carroll just not very well

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  14. I don't exactly see Anderson scoring goals like he did at Porto, or De Gea proving he's a 17M keeper.

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  15. Veron was also a good buy.

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  16. Anderson hardly scored at Porto and he plays further back now for Man Utd it seems.

    De Gea not suited to PL, at least for now, as he stays on his line too much, imo, with crosses/corners but he is a puppy especially for a keeper, early days.

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  17. So was eric djemba djemba

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  18. A manager makes bad buy from time to time, what a revelation(!)

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  19. No one can bring themselves to say it but Kenny Dalglish's CHOSE those players and not just Carroll.
    We may not like it as fans but nothing Carroll has done since he left has made me regret getting shot of him.

    One more thing I think that Fergus is losing the plot in some dementia type scenario he can't fathom.
    He can;t work out to have a go at Carroll's purchase or take a sideswipe at Rafa.

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  20. Djemba-Djemba, Veron, Taibi, Bellion, Blanc, De Gea, Owen, etc.................all great signing weren't they???

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  21. It's certainly funny to see Rafa getting up Taggart's nose already, just days into the job. And what a big, red, veined nose it is too.....!!

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  22. Whereas, amusingly, Rafa looked rather pasty, ill and white as a ghost, when Geoff Shreeves was pestering him after the match, in relation to the boos.

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  23. you cannot blame kd for everything get a grip rodgers signings have hardly set the premiership alive

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  24. Fergie, appears to have a lot of points to make about other clubs at the moment ie. chelsea, liverpool, andy carroll (perhaps its deflection)!.
    Errors were made by FSG / BR in the last transfer window, but I recall red nose was almost sacked after his first year at utd for a collection of errors. As your list indicates he has made some great blunders in the players market ie. kleberson, veron, forlan (he turned both great players into temporary rubbish), owen, anderson, djemba, obertaun. The carroll issue is all relative to the sale of Torres, on the last day of a transfer window!.

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  25. Have you seen his statue......................hilarious and nothing like him, It needs a purple nose to make it look real........LOL!

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  26. I'm blaming him for the signings he made. Hardly unreasonable.

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  27. All mu players u have listed above are more valuable now. So MU made a good investment not like KD!!! LFC should have kept Steve Clarke and not hired BR.

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  28. He took swipes at both.

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  29. no your not your blaming him for rodgers having no money to spend as well kd was given the order to buy young british players and thats what he did fair enought downing let him down big style and adams did not do much but carroll and henderson are still young and should be given a chance to develop ,like everone keeps saying about rodgers signings well allen is getting worse by the week and looks a complete waste of money as for the rest of his signings the less said the better

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  30. Certainly a big jump, as he only had half-a-season in PL as a regular. But Ferguson loves to, intentionally or unintentionally, talk some proper rubbish such as in relation to his spending bit in his comment about Carroll.

    p.s. I am surprised Kanwar hasn't gone overboard on Suarez's challenge on Chico.

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  31. what about Quinton Fortune and Kleberson?!

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  32. I am blaming him for the signings he has made. The signings he has made are still here and leeches on our wage/transfer budget, which impacts on our budget. So, to a certain extent, we are still paying the price for his signings and therefore, when looked at that way, I am blaming him for the signings he has made.

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  33. our budget are you deranged there is no budget fsg are going to screw the club into the groud they got rid of kenny after a successful season last year because he would have not stood for their crap and fans would have listened to him,they hired a yes man in rodgers and now where seeing the price wednesday night lose to spurs the seasons over listen over before december and you can thank rodgers and fsg for that

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  34. Is finishing 8th in the Premier league to be determined as a successful season? Yes, we limped over the line against lower league opposition to win the Carling Cup, made the final of the FA Cup but seeing as the League provides much more prize money for position and Champions League football (and hence more prize money) then it looks to me like we didn't get our priorities right last year. Not being in Europe was a golden opportunity to focus on the league and try and get back into the top 4, especially given our finish in the second half of the previous season (KKs comeback).

    So we not only blew our chance of being successful last year with poor buys, we are still paying this year with the hefty wage budget we still carry.

    People have argued Carroll and Henderson should be given time, they are young, well given their hefty price and 70K (approx) each a week we cannot afford the luxury of giving them time. They should not have been bought and they should be taken off the wage budget as soon as possible, along with Downing and Cole whilst we continue building for the future. About time common sense was restored to our club.

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  35. Point is paying couple of mill for them.

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  36. just wish the red nosed pi ss head would concentrate on his own club. personally think there's something a bit jimmy saville about his eyes!

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  37. 'there is no budget' - we made a £4m bid for Dempsey, that indicates that there was a budget in the summer. They brought in Sahin, Allen, etc, so that suggests there was a budget (wages or transfer money). The next transfer window is January, so lets see if there is a budget, before assuming there is no budget on the basis of nothing. And the budget/expenditure would be healthier if we didn't have to carry players like Downing, Hendo. I have doubts over Rodgers but KK II wasn't great, like it or not. Calling me 'deranged' for mentioning budget? Well show there is no budget, then accuse me of being 'deranged'. Otherwise, your a KK II sheep.

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  38. Anderson 17 mil Lucas 5 mil

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  39. Tocsic 7 mil. Never played nothing said by media

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  40. strange decision to start henderson and not shelvey? aleast he got a goal in him. good header by ac plan b!!!

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  41. Joe the point hes making is fergie says he buys players cheap when they are young not how much they are worth now.

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  42. Well your comment didn't live up to the expectation of basic english! Bad spelling, poor grammar and unable to construct a sentance. I hope you didn't pay millions for your education.

    Veron failed to live up to expectation, nor did forlan.

    Stupid neutral.

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  43. Right on brother Chan. Well said . You took the words right out of my mouth.

    Dempsey's poor current performance can be only attributed to his lack of many premiere league starts where he is at. He was a player in a system in which he was heavily depended on day in day out. When he made the switch to Spurs he finds him self as nothing more than a substitute. Breaking into the starting eleven becomes his next big battle. Spurs in a certain light can be seen as a step down. Here Dempsey is not seen as the "rain maker" and he is not given the chance to be "the messiah" (the man who was relied on to pull a rabbit out of a hat ;the man who could save the team) like he was at Fulham . Dempsey would definately have been relied upon more at Liverpool. The Merseyside team certainly possess a thinner squad than does Tottenham Hotspurs. It is safe to assume that if he had been picked up by BR he would have had the opportunity to play more minutes and in so doing his influence on the team.

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  44. Jason, top tier players are not going to look at Liverpool and think, "this looks like a great club to go. I can win so much FA cup and Capital One cup silverware!" No. If Liverpool wants to ever win the league again, they need to get back into the top 4 that will attract high calibre players, who can contribute to that goal.

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  45. I don't know if you're a manc or not, judging by your name, but that's not the point Jaimie is making. Man utd buys may have been successful, but what Jaimie is saying is that man utd have still gambled alot of money on young, inexperienced players in the past, something ferguson has criticised us for.

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  46. They can afford to waste money like that on young players, as they have the squad and recent success to compensate, whereas we don't.

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  47. Patrick Apea-Danquah11:57 pm, November 26, 2012

    we always forget that he got us suarez n enrique too and we had one of the best defences last season ...u would notice that our woes truly started when lucas leaped off the field i think if lucas was on ,then most of our flopps would have started of the bench and understudied lucas and SG . seriously i think FA finals and Carling Cup was a good start ..we just weren't patient enough.

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  48. Fergie is right because our stupidity has afforded him the right to criticise. Success covers failures - and because fergie has ben successful no one will point to his own cock ups. Whereas honestly speaking the dalglish 2nd tenure was a humongous disaster in terms of transfers in and results. And thats why fergie can talk.

    By the way im glad carrol went and glad we didnt get dempsey. Why we didnt go for berbatov i will never know. What is it about our scouts that identify mediocre talent?

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  49. Did he??? I turned it off as soon as the final whistle had gone. My arse had gone numb.

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  50. And maybe clutching a couple of speeding tickets...

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  51. More bulls**t headlines from this site.

    How can Fergie "slate" Rodgers for the "massive transfer failure" of Carroll making "a big jump", when Rodgers was not even at the club??!

    Total sensationalist rubbish

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  52. Didn't Enrique put in exactly the same kind of challenge as Suarez did last week, and nobody said a word?

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  53. Lmao Smurfy, old whiskey beak is starting to rewrite history now he,s close to the end of his tenure, kenny will always be a legend but the signings of carroll, hendo, downing & adam were a financial disaster that has definitely impacted on us, no club out of the top four can keep sustaining hits like we have, carroll & hendo have some potential but the price we paid was criminal, downing too!

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  54. everything he dose is strange he opens his mouth and words just come out br = disaster

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  55. gripper get a grip so this season no cup runs weare in europe thanks to kd but rodgers his doing his best to get us out as soon as possible mite not get europe next season so rodgers will be costing us money also dont go on about kds signings and put cole name there you cannot blame him for everything

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  56. i would call you a lot worse but think the word filter would catch me out ,rodgers as said its about balancing the books again and on the subject of dempsey 4 million you can offer to buy a player but the other club as to except it ive heard were going to offer 6 million for messi but not a penny more hence we will not be signing him oh well at least we tried lol

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  57. so your point being what? honestly hand on heart if kk had been given another season do you think we would have 16 points from 13 league games this season

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  58. some one with sense and there was also the little matter of suarezs ban imagine were we would be this season if he had been suspended

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  59. 'Rodgers said', just because he said something doesn't mean its true or it should be twisted that way. I can see it like that, just like you have implied the Dempsey bid doesn't prove we have money/budget. Well done(!) So you haven't got anything to conclusively prove there is no budget. Just as a I thought, yet u got the nerve to me 'deranged'. Ph the amusing hypocrisy of your post hehe. Cheerio, can't be bothered responding further to a narrow-minded aggressor.

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  60. No way are they more valuable. Who would top 18m for De Gea? or pay half the £20m cost for Anderson? Bebe and Powell have done sod all, and Rooney is getting older and less effective, can't see too many takers over £27m, RVP was less than that. Overall, not much to back up your view

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  61. Ferguson bought Veron for £28.1m and sold him for £15m, a loss of over £13m. Given that Carroll will stay at West Ham for around £19m, a £16m loss, mitigated by wage savings due to his loan, is there really that much difference between the two?

    Adjusted for inflation, ie £28m then would be a hell of a lot more now, I don't think so.

    Not that the press would dare point that out, too scared of a ban

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  62. When Ferguson bought Veron, Veron was considered a world class midfield maestro of proven class - on the other hand you have Andy Carroll.

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  63. Borini was bought early in the transfer window and not meant as Carroll's replacement. As BR admitted, he had wonted an additional player to replace Carroll, so SAF's comment whilst not tactful is not incorrect in that it was naive to let Carroll go without having secured a replacement.

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  64. Ferguson was spot on with what he said but he didn't blame Rodgers at all.

    And anyone trying to compare Veron to Carroll is a moron. Carroll is mediocre and was unproven when LFC signed him. Veron was one of the best players in the world and a world class midfielder.

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  65. Veron was world class, Carroll is Championship class.

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  66. Veron played like a drain, both for Utd and Chelsea, world class or not. Shevchenko was world class too, what does that prove? he was a waste of money, at least Carroll was young, not already established and supposedly 'world class'

    The point was, the amount of money lost was roughly the same, but the media barely made anything of it cos it was Fergie.
    This puts Carroll into context, hardly the first time this has happened is it?

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  67. The sad thing is, had Dalglish offered 35 million for Falcao or Hulk at that time, he probably would have got Porto to sell one of them. Just like he spent 20 million on Downing when he could have signed Mata for a little less. He's an Anfield legend and he'll always be my hero but his transfer dealings show he was too long out of the game to be a manager in modern day football.

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  68. Wowee yes it's astonishing isn't it...At the end of the day the original post was about ferguson and his selective memory....Of course managers make bad buys it just gets more attention among the big name teams It's crazy what clubs pay for some players nowadays.....You can put that in your book of revelations too if you like.

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  69. Veron played two seasons for United and helped United win the league and was sold for 14m less than what United had bought him for. BUT atthat time he was one of the world's top 5 midfielders - easily.
    Andy Carroll is the 8th most expensive player of all time and isn't even in the top 20 strikers in the world. Steven Fletcher is better than him and that's not even a joke. And if you were to sell Carroll now, you couldn't get 15 mil for him. He's a donkey. And to circle back to the topic, BR couldn't even replace the donkey with a decent striker before letting Carroll go out on loan.

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  70. You r right it amazes me how so many people don't get the concept of inflation

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