Hindsight is wonderful, but Sir Alex missed a big trick

'El Nino' leaves Vidic in his wake

Sir Alex Ferguson has missed out on players before, it’s nothing new.

Paul Gascoigne opted to move to North London ahead of United whilst Alan Shearer twice snubbed United. More notably in the summer of 2003 United just missed out on signing Ronaldinho who instead joined Barcelona and helped them on their way to becoming the force they are now, winning back to back leagues as well as the Champions League. But probably the one that will stick in Ferguson throat the most is the fact he missed out on none other than a certain Spaniard.

There are a whole host of theories as to why ‘El Nino’ never became a Red Devil. Some say Fergie thought he was not worth the money Atletico Madrid were asking as he only managed to score more than 20 goals in a season once during his in Spain whilst others say that despite Fergie regularly enquiring about his availability, Torres himself did not want to join or Atletico priced him out of a move.

Regardless of the reason, Torres did not join United and instead in 2007 he joined their great rivals. The rest as they say is history. Torres took to the Premier League like a duck to water netting 33 times in his first season, 24 of those coming in the league. As it currently stands Torres has scored 60 times in 97 appearances, a quite phenomenal record.

The magnitude of the United’s loss was displayed for all to see in 2009 when the Reds came to Old Trafford and embarrassed United on their home turf with a 4-1 victory. It wasn’t just the score line that was significant rather Torres’ performance shone as he somehow managed to rattle the usually dominant Nemanja Vidic, forcing him into an error from which he capitalised, scoring Liverpool‘s first. Torres carried this on this season as he again scored against United in a 2-0 home victory. He continually looked out of the game but the second a chance appeared he took it, racing clear of United’s defence, holding off Rio Ferdinand’s challenge and smashed past a helpless Edwin Van der Saar, to confirm why he is seen as the deadliest striker in the game.

Today Huddersfield coach and former United striker Andy Cole has come out, claiming Ferguson did indeed miss a trick in letting Torres slip through his fingers to join rivals Liverpool but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Of course it will look like United messed up when they failed to sign ‘El Nino’ now that Ronaldo has joined Real Madrid and their goal output has dropped (United have currently scored the least goals out of the ‘big 4′ with just 23 goals) but not many would have guessed that he would take to the English league the way he has especially if you consider his record in Spain.

Despite failing to sign him United have not done too bad winning the League in both of the Spaniard’s seasons at Anfield. Just this summer United also missed out on signing Karim Benzema but the club won’t go into meltdown, instead they will find a way to succeed without the Frenchman. The same way they have found a way to succeed without Torres because that is just United, they always do.