Manchester United's interim manager Ralf Rangnick has recounted how the club's board snubbed his idea of potentially signing a striker during the January transfer window. The German coach has blamed the club's failures this season on their refusal to sign a striker with his active spell at the club coming to an end.
Back in November 2021, Rangnick succeeded Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in an interim capacity and is set to carry on in a consultancy role with the club for a period of three years when the season ends. Despite having been brought in to steady the ship, the former RB Leipzig boss has fallen short of expectations. The Red Devils are ending the season without any trophy and have also not done enough to merit Champions League qualification for next season.
Ahead of this weekend's trip to Brighton & Hove Albion for their penultimate game of the season, Rangnick has stated that the club's inadequacies can be partly blamed on the fact that they did not sign a striker in January. At the time, Anthony Martial had been allowed to join Sevilla on loan, Mason Greenwood was suspended as he was under investigation for an alleged assault while Edinson Cavani was strugglng to get match fitness.
Although several good options were available on the market, Rangnick has revealed that his plea for an emergency signing was thrown out on the advice of the club's recruitment department. Instead, the club resorted to sticking with only Cristiano Ronaldo, Marcus Rashford and also blocked Jesse Lingard from securing a move which would have seen him get more playing time elsewhere.
Having won six and lost one of his first ten games as interim manager leading up to the winter break, his subsequent 17 outings have produced only five victories. United were also knocked out of the FA Cup by Middlesbrough, lost to Atletico Madrid in the first round of the Champions League, and then watched their bid for a top-four finish implode.
"The answer at the time was no there was no player on the market that could really help us - 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 those are just three of them that come across my mind now," said Rangnick.
"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 the past and it doesn't help us anymore.
"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," Rangnick added.
