Manchester United transfer legends XI can’t even fit Frenkie De Jong on the bench

There is no room at all for Frenkie De Jong in this phenomenal team of Manchester United transfer legends who never actually joined the club.

Francesco Toldo
First mentioned as a Manchester United target during the search for Peter Schmeichel’s successor in 1999, Francesco Toldo was ruled out on the basis of cost. Massimo Taibi and Mark Bosnich were signed instead and that went so well that Toldo re-emerged on the radar within a year. The Italian keeper even insisted Fiorentina “are definitely trying to push me towards Manchester United, because they don’t want to sell me to another Italian team.” Toldo moved to Inter Milan 12 months later and had his final dalliance with Old Trafford in 2005, when he was considered as a cheap stop-gap replacement for Roy Carroll.

Ezequiel Garay
Long before signing Argentinean centre-halves became a vague habit and Marcos Rojo and Lisandro Martinez were but a twinkle in the Manchester United scouting department’s collective eye, Ezequiel Garay was being linked with a move to Old Trafford. “I believe the exit of Ferguson has influenced the deal,” he said in October 2013. “Moyes did not believe in me as much but that’s not a problem.” That well would be revisited under both Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho but neither pulled the trigger; Garay instead swapped Benfica for Zenit Saint Petersburg, then Valencia and injury-enforced retirement.

Mats Hummels
It was while watching a teenage Mario Gotze that Mats Hummels first came to the public attention of Manchester United in December 2011. A £15m bid was suggested for the supposed Nemanja Vidic replacement. The Serbian centre-half would actually stay until summer 2014, with Hummels later claiming he was “very close” to joining then. Hummels also “thought about going to Manchester United in 2015” and “there were talks, several times in the last few years” between the two parties, the latest such case coming in 2019 when he turned them down because of vibes and Champions League football.

Sergio Ramos
“We are at Man United, so we are always going to be linked with Ramos or Hummels or whoever it is. It’s not a problem,” was the elongated shrug of the shoulders issued by one Phil Jones in October 2015. That year saw the height of Sergio-Ramos-to-Manchester-United discourse as he openly engineered a new Real Madrid contract by manipulating their interest. The Spaniard was linked with the Premier League club before and since, first…