Ralf Rangnick suggested a handful of transfer targets to Manchester United during his short stint at Old Trafford, including two players who have since joined Premier League champions Manchester City.
The 65-year-old German, who was appointed as United's interim manager following Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's sacking in November 2021, was certainly outspoken about the club's uncertain situation.
For starters, Rangnick wasn't given any signings in January, despite United lacking in a number of areas.
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United would instead wait for a permanent manager to take the reigns before spending any money – even though their interim manager was set to continue in a consultancy role for a further two years.
“You don’t even need glasses to see and analyse where the problems are,” he memorably said towards the end of his spell as boss.
“Now it’s about how do we solve them? It’s not enough to do some minor amendments – cosmetic things. In medicine you would say that this is an operation of the open heart."
Rangnick would later speak about some of the targets he wanted during his reign at the Premier League club in an interview with German publication BILD.
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“There was no such dossier, and it was never wanted by the club,” he said. “But even without such a script, it was clear to everyone that there was a need in many areas.
“That’s why we were already discussing players like Josko Gvardiol and Christopher Nkunku from RB Leipzig. Those were names that were realistic.
“We also talked about Alvaro Morata, Luis Diaz, Dusan Vlahovic and, as I said, Erling Haaland when they were still on the market. But the club decided at that time to rebuild the team under the new coach.”
As well as the six targets mentioned above – Gvardiol, Nkunku, Morata, Diaz, Vlahovic and Haaland – the former RB Leipzig coach is said to have recommended a number of others top talents.
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Enzo Fernandez was reportedly of interest, with scouts being deployed to Argentina to watch him play for River Plate. In fact, those scouts in attendance were blown away by his talents, according to a report from Ole.
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But once again, United stalled on a move as they wanted to give their new manager a say in new signings, and Benfica snapped him up for just £17 million.
Rangnick also revealed that United failed to a make a move for Julian Alvarez, who would later join Manchester City, in that January transfer window.
"The answer at the time was no, there was no player on the market that could really help us," he told reporters.
"[But] there were a few: Diaz who is now at Liverpool, Alvarez who will be at Manchester City in the summer, Vlahovic who at the time still was with Fiorentina.
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"Those are just three of them that come across my mind now."
He added: "We had four days off at the time and on the Sunday I was informed about the issues with Mason Greenwood and obviously Anthony Martial had already left and then I was aware that within four days we had some strikers missing and it might make sense.
"We were still in three competitions - Champions League, FA Cup and fourth in the league, but that's in the past and it doesn't help us anymore.
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"I spoke to the board and said 'shouldn't we at least speak and try and analyse if we could get a player either on loan or as a permanent deal', but in the end the answer was no.
"I still believe that we should have at least tried. If we would've found and been able in 48 hours, 48 hours is short notice but it's still 48 hours. It might have been worth to try and internally discuss but we didn't and it was not done."
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Featured Image Credit: GettyTopics: Manchester United, Ralf Rangnick, Premier League, Erik Ten Hag, Erling Haaland, Josko Gvardiol, Manchester City