Sir Alex is a transfer master
MANCHESTER UNITED are undoubtedly losing one of their greatest players of all time in Cristiano Ronaldo, but manager Sir Alex Ferguson rarely gets his big transfer decisions wrong.
Ferguson demands total commitment from his players and it is easy to understand if he has decided that this is the right time to sell Ronaldo.
The Portuguese winger’s frequent and very public flirtation with Real Madrid can only have damaged the team as a whole, and that is what Ferguson rightly prizes above all else. In many ways he had to go.
Ferguson may well feel that £80m is too good to turn down, when you remember that Kaka – still considered one of the best players in the world and only 27 years old – cost Real some £24m less.
The huge windfall will allow Ferguson to invest heavily in strengthening a team that was already strong enough to win three trophies last season and narrowly miss out on a second successive Champions League title.
What will be interesting now is how much of the cash is made available to him for spending, and how Ferguson chooses to use it.
A marquee signing to replace Ronaldo seems likely, with Bayern Munich’s Franck Ribery the most obvious choice.
Ferguson’s record of replacing seemingly indispensable stars is impeccable – see Paul Ince and David Beckham – so I really cannot see United’s fortunes suffering much in the long term.