Rating the £404million Man Utd have spent on forwards since Ferguson

Manchester United have invested a lot of money in attacking players since Sir Alex Ferguson retired – but has it been money well spent?

Ferguson signed some brilliant forwards during his time at Old Trafford, including Eric Cantona, Andy Cole, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo.

But United have not had the same success in that department in recent years and are yet to add to the 20th league title that Ferguson won in 2013.

We’ve taken a look at the forwards they’ve signed since 2013 and ranked them all, from worst to best. 

Note: we’ve not included forwards that joined the club on a free transfer or in a swap deal so that rules out Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Edinson Cavani and Alexis Sanchez.

Having produced a man-of-the-match performance for Real Madrid in the 2014 Champions League final, expectations were high when Di Maria joined United.

The Argentina international was excellent during his first few weeks at United – his fabulous chipped goal against Leicester City was a particular highlight – but everything went downhill from there.

He had a very poor relationship with Louis van Gaal and was allowed to leave the club for a substantial loss just a year after arriving.

“My problem at Manchester was the coach,” Di Maria told TyC Sports in 2021. “Van Gaal was the worst of my career.

“I would score, assist, and the next day he would show me my misplaced passes. He displaced me from one day to the other, he didn’t like players being more than him.”

A sublime Angel Di Maria finish at the King Power Stadium #GoalOfTheDay // @ManUtd pic.twitter.com/yMp6paggPl

— Premier League (@premierleague) October 21, 2021

Ferguson was renowned for buying previously unknown foreign players and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer tried to follow in his footsteps