The most interesting transfer lasts season was that of Robin van Persie’s. Manchester United got hold of the Dutch striker from Arsenal in August, and since then, there has been no looking back.
“I said some time ago that I don’t think we appreciated the full use of him but I think that’s happening now,” stated Sir Alex at his pre-match press conference. “We’re more familiar with the type of player he is and that’s helped us. He’s become really important to us.
“What he did last year was only the culmination of a few years at Arsenal. Any player in the first year, you never know for sure. Who’d have thought Wayne would have scored a hat-trick on his debut? That was fairytale stuff. You never know what you’re going to get. What we did think is that we’d found a very good player.”
Fergie explained the working of the transfer market by giving the example of Samir Nasri and he believes that a lot of money was not spent on Persie who was in the last year of his contract at the Emirates.
“The first thing we looked at was the player’s ability,” he revealed. “To pay that amount of money was a lot for a player in his last year. But the thing about that is that it was proved a year before when City played £24million for Samir Nasri – you either want him or you don’t want him.
“If you want him, you have to pay the price the club is sticking out for. We wanted Robin badly so we were prepared to go the extra mile for him. It’s just the way the game is nowadays. Obviously if you’re negotiating with a club who still has the player under contract for another three or four years then they’re in a better position, but at the end of the day negotiations are negotiations.”
On the other hand, Manchester United could be threatened by Luis Suarez on Sunday. Suarez had got into much of a controversy when he had apparently used his hand to score a goal against Mansfield last Sunday.
However, Sir Alex said that there was no need to prepare for Luis Suarez’ specifically.
“We want to concentrate on ourselves,” explained the boss. “We pay respect to every opponent and analysis of our opponents is important. You should always give your team as much information as you can.
“Sometimes you can overdo it – going back 20 years ago we could show players a full game on video but these days that doesn’t happen. They don’t have the concentration. Now we condense it to the important aspects of the game. Suarez is no different to other good players we come up against in the league.”
Liverpool lost 2-1 to Manchester United earlier this season.
Written by Rida Mehtab (@RidaaMehtaab on Twitter)
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