Manchester United: Why Alex Ferguson Can't Afford Not to Sign Wesley Sneijder

Sir Alex Ferguson is sticking around Old Trafford for only one major reason.

Having taken Manchester United past Liverpool as England’s most-titled club, he now wants to overtake the Champions League/European record still held by his old foes from Anfield.

They have won it five times. United are two behind. If it is at all possible, Ferguson wants to head into retirement having won it six times and the £35.2M signing for Wesley Sneijder is at the core of the last great master plan of his reign.

The real financial outlay is a staggering one. Not only will he be breaking his club’s transfer record to take the Dutchman away from Inter Milan, but he has also, according to reports, agreed that the 27-year-old should be paid £180,000 per week.

So, the actual total amount of money being spent on Sneijder should he be given a five-year deal as expected, will rise to £80M—funnily enough the world record price he got for Cristiano Ronaldo when he was sold to Real Madrid.

Many people will look at such figures and declare that Sneijder is not worth it. That at his age, the midfielder will rapidly drop sell-on value and, after all, did United not just won the Premier League and reach yet another Champions League final?

Ferguson thinks not, nor, indeed, do I.

He has come to realise that if United are to maintain their position as the world’s most valuable club and force their way beyond Barcelona as kings of Europe, then big money, massive money, has to be invested.

The United manager knows as well as anyone that he got away with it last season.

He created that new record of 19 championship successes and got to the Champions League final, thanks partly to Chelsea’s midseason domestic implosion and favourable draws in Europe.

His winning of the Premier League, in terms of his man-management given injuries and a lack of real midfield class, was masterful—perhaps the best triumph of his Old Trafford career, certainly in terms of English bragging rights, but he still got away with it.

Yet, when push came to shove in Wembley’s Champions League climax, reality bit and it bit hard.

He had to accept that Barca’s second successive decimation meant taking the bull by the horns in a transfer market that a year ago he was saying had become prohibitively expensive.

Hence the arrivals of David de Gea, Ashley Young and Phil Jones for a total of £52M, albeit that they remain part of his rule of bringing in young players who can be sold for at least what he paid for them if they don’t work.

None of them, however, are the key to what Ferguson is attempting to achieve.

Sneijder is. And if there were ever to be a “new” Paul Scholes, then he is pretty much an identikit image, even if the pair have different hair colours.

By the time Scholes hung up his boots at the end of last season, he had played  676 games for United and scored 150 goals.

Sneijder is now with his third club, having started at Ajax before spending two years with Real Madrid, and the percentages are astonishingly similar: to date, he has made 325 appearances and hit 83 times. You do the math.

Ferguson certainly has done the math. The figures all add up for him just as they do for United’s owners, the Glazers.

The Scotsman will be hoping, of course, that Sneijder can handle the responsibility of deposing Barcelona as the kings of Europe.

The last two talisman signings, Juan Sebastian Veron and Dimitar Berbatov, failed to provide the inspiration asked of them. The Argentinian couldn’t budge Roy Keane from his position at the axis of the side; the Bulgarian, in Europe, became a nonentity.

Sneijder, however, has attitude as well as great passing and tactical acumen. Ferguson has identified him as the man who can provide a new, more sophisticated dynamic and the Dutchman’s character suggests he is likely to respond with a vengeance.

True, he will be asked to carry quite a load, yet Young’s arrival will be of huge benefit and Jones has a mature head on his young shoulders while Rooney’s rediscovery of himself and the effervescence of Javier Hernandez will help create a potentially vibrant scenario.

European, or in real terms global domination, is what Ferguson wants for United on the field so that the club can maintain its position financially.

That is the big picture. That is why Sneijder is worth it. In fact, United and Ferguson cannot afford not to buy him and that is the real bottom line.