Just 12 months ago, Radamel Falcao was among the top three No9s in football, alongside Robin van Persie, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Robert Lewandowski, depending on your preference.
A surprise move to Monaco last summer from Atletico Madrid saw him score 13 goals in 22 appearances before his knee injury in January caused him to miss the World Cup. Throughout the summer, and with Monaco keen to lift the burden of his wages against Financial Fair Play, he has been offered to every major club in Europe.
He is a brilliant finisher. His goal records at Porto, 72 in 87, and Atletico, 70 in 91, are testament to that. His movement is fantastic and among the four strikers mentioned above, inside the penalty area he is perhaps the best of the lot. Ruthless, quick and with that innate ability to find space and know where the ball is going to drop.
The consensus is that the transfer has been fuelled by concerns over Robin van Persie’s knee injury and the departure of Javier Hernandez, leaving United’s forward line – recently considered their strongest area – a little light.
Louis van Gaal can also not have been left particularly impressed by their attacking endeavours. With just two goals in four games, there is little bang for the considerable amount of bucks invested in that department over recent years.
Added to that is how flat Rooney and Juan Mata have looked, while Van Persie’s 136 minutes have merely confirmed he’s nowhere near match sharpness. Within the context of all that, and the fact it’s only a loan, Falcao makes sense.
That said, he has only played five competitive games of football in 2014 and is coming back from a serious knee injury at the age of 28. Time will tell if he can return to his incredible form of 2012-13. But like so many of United’s additions post-Ferguson, there are more questions than answers and the transfer is not what the Colombian is, it’s more what he isn’t.
In February, Nemanja Vidic announced he would be leaving the club, while it was abundantly clear Rio Ferdinand would follow, given his declining status. The totems of United’s defence since 2006, chief executive Ed Woodward had, if he hadn’t considered it before, six months to identify replacements and start negotiations, with the jury still out on Chris Smalling and Phil Jones, although the latter has arguably been United’s best performer so far this season.
Maybe it was an unrealistic pursuit of Borussia Dortmund’s Mats Hummels or Van Gaal discarding suggested targets such as Mehdi Benatia. But, the fact remains for all the money spent, none has been on a dominant central defender.
Midfield was the area of the field David Moyes was desperate to address last summer with failed bids for Cesc Fabregas and Ander Herrera and indecision over Thiago Alcantara. Herrera has now arrived, Blind added and while Di Maria is a midfielder of sorts, he is undeniably an attacking player.
There are no ball-winners offering defensive protection. United are trapped in their own Arsenal-post-Patrick Vieira hell and little has been done to climb out of it.
Concern must lie in the timing of all these deals – Rojo on August 19, Di Maria, August 26, Blind and Falcao yesterday – when the understanding was Woodward had been given a list of targets in May upon Van Gaal’s appointment.
Did such a list exist, or did Van Gaal want to take a closer look at his squad? If that was the case, was that not a risky strategy given the delay of the World Cup amid the need for specific recruitment.
Of course, the transfer market is a deeply complex place, made harder for United by their lack of Champions League football and, in Woodward’s defence, the end result of six players with considerable pedigree means he has achieved what he set out to do. However, it’s difficult to envisage Rojo, Di Maria or Falcao being initial targets.
The latter two are clients of Jorge Mendes, and all this last-minute action underlines his influence at the club. Did United go to him, or was it the other way around? If it’s the latter it only highlights that, for all the star names added, it’s been another muddled transfer window.
