‘Their loss’, ‘would have ruined him’ – Man City fans react as Ralf Rangnick says Man Utd board blocked Julian Alvarez January transfer

Manchester United manager Ralf Rangnick has revealed Julian Alvarez was a player of interest in January, but the club’s board said ‘no’, and the Argentine striker joined Manchester City.

The 22-year-old forward signed for the Citizens in January before returning to River Plate on loan, where he is currently set to stay until December 31.

During the same window, Luis Diaz joined Liverpool from Porto in a £37million deal and has since played a key role for Jurgen Klopp’s side while Dusan Vlahovic meanwhile left Fiorentina to join Juventus despite interest from Arsenal

Ralf Rangnick has revealed his late attempts to sign a forward in January were rejected by the club’s board, leaving them short of striking options in the second half of the season.

“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.”

The news was shared on Twitter by City Xtra and it attracted plenty of attention from the club’s supporters.

“Their loss.”
Credit: @100_MCFC

“United would have ruined him”
Credit: @MtMcfc

“Didn’t they learn with aguero?”
Credit: @jamesthomps0n

“I want him to score against them soo bad now!”
Credit: @Nawaz_Khan21

“Can’t wait for aguero 2.0 now”
Credit: @hastingos

“We’re astronomically clear.”
Credit: @shaz_135

“Man Utd biggest issue isn’t the players and the managers they had, it’s their board, not fully backing the managers, unlike Pep for us and Klopp for Liverpool”
Credit: @lcheung1998