Paul Pogba’s world record return a statement of Manchester United’s enduring prowess

Richard Jolly offers his thought's on Paul Pogba's move to Manchester United and explains why the world record deal is a symbol of the club's status despite a turbulent few years.

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Enter the record-breaker. Paul Pogba is the most expensive footballer in history, a statement signing, a solution and a symptom. His £89 million (Dh424.3) move reveals much about the modern-day Manchester United. It is a costly coup that suggests Jose Mourinho's regime will be infused with more substance and more credibility than Louis van Gaal's.

It is an endorsement of the Portuguese. He has persuaded a player who looks a potential Uefa Champions League winner to join a club in the Europa League. Even though the Premier League’s eventual summer spending will top £1 billion, only two players with legitimate claims to be bracketed in the world’s top 10 have arrived in England. Both, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Pogba, are at United.

The Swede is a short-term signing. The Frenchman, at 23, is the sort of big-money buy Alex Ferguson used to make. As he did with Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand, United have bought in the anticipation that their hefty investment can be repaid over a decade or more.

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Yet Pogba is also an indictment of Ferguson, a player effecting a triumphant return to Old Trafford four years after he left without starting a first-team game.

While that can be explained in part by the Frenchman’s ambition, it was nevertheless a mistake by Ferguson not to involve him more, not to cater to the wishes of his agent Mino Raiola and not to recognise he represented the future.

United recouped just £800,000 in compensation, less than one per cent of the amount it has taken to bring him back. Yet the financial cost was accompanied by the footballing consequences.

United’s midfield has been a wasteland for much of the last few years; partly because Ferguson did not buy a senior central midfielder after 2007, partly because of the various tactics of David Moyes and Van Gaal and partly because of the failings of the personnel deployed there.

Pogba boasts the athleticism to render him suitable for English football and the technical quality to play for anyone.

He can be the box-to-box runner, the tackler, the creator and the finisher. He scored 10 goals in each of his last two seasons for Juventus and, while he can top that tally, no specialist central midfielder has reached double figures for United since Paul Scholes in 2004/05.

Pogba should make Mourinho’s United more physical, more purposeful and more potent which, after the sterility of Van Gaal’s football, they must be.

He is part of a midfield makeover — exit, presumably, the slower Bastian Schweinsteiger — and the face of the modern United.

A club known for cost-cutting during much of the Glazers’ ownership are now happy to flaunt their wealth.

There is an element of vanity about it; it also highlights a shift in their footballing fortunes. Now the glint of money shines brighter than recently-acquired silverware.

United have been willing to break the world transfer record for three years. They had not managed it until now. Executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, who had seen a string of targets elude him, may feel a sense of validation.

Now United have used their financial muscle to construct a deal that others could not afford.

Putting it bluntly, United blew Pogba’s other suitors out of the water. Others may have had a greater footballing appeal to a Euro 2016 finalist.

They could not, or would not, match a fee that is unrivalled in history.

United’s Galatico hunt, a quest to sign players commensurate with their status as one of the world’s biggest clubs, has been a long and draining affair.

If they thought they had recruited them in Radamel Falcao, Angel Di Maria and Schweinsteiger, they were mistaken. Each proved a disappointment. Two were declining quicker than they could run.

Pogba is different. He is a player who would arguably get into any side, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Real Madrid included.

He is a former target of two of their peers: Chelsea and Manchester City both wanted him last summer.

United got him. It required a huge fee, but he could have a huge impact.

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