The damning final truth of Antony’s Manchester United nightmare

Pound for pound the worst signing in English football history, Manchester United will continue to count the cost of their most expensive mistake

Ruben Amorim was discussing a forward he doesn’t pick. He would, he said on Sunday, be willing to put his 63-year-old goalkeeping coach on the bench ahead of him if he didn’t give the maximum in training. It wasn’t Antony he was talking about: Marcus Rashford was the man damned by comparison with Jorge Vital. (Although a spot on the bench has already opened up.) The temptation is to suggest the veteran Vital would be of similar use to Antony as a substitute.

It was one illustration of the crushing failure of the second most expensive signing in United’s history that, out of sight, already out of mind, he went unmentioned at Craven Cottage on Sunday. Antony had already become part afterthought, part joke. The initial sense was that United had done well to get Real Betis to pay 84 per cent of his wages to borrow him for the rest of the season; but no loan fee, no return on his ridiculous £85m transfer fee. The likelihood may be that Antony leaves on a free transfer, perhaps when his contract ends in 2027, maybe after being loaned out again. Few have any reason to buy him when they have proof United will let him leave without bringing any money in.

Manchester United will continue to feel the cost of Antony’s expensive price tag (Getty Images)

He goes as, pound for pound, the worst buy any English club has made, his €100m price rendering him an incongruous presence alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Harry Kane in the list of the all-time costliest transfers. Only a minority of the top 25 have justified their fees but even in that context, Antony is an anomaly, an average player somehow elevated to such heights.

In one respect, it was a shame he was granted a few minutes in defeat to Brighton. Without that, his second-half showing against Southampton may have forever proved his last United game. Because it would have proved a symbolic end, his astonishing miss from three yards a symbolic demonstration of how this has gone horribly wrong.

Go back two-and-a-half years and it started surreally well. Antony scored a terrific debut goal against Arsenal. He became the only player ever to score in each of their first three Premier League games for United. But after three in three came only two in 59. The initial sense of wondering if, for that eye-catching amount, United had unearthed a gem soon gave way to the realisation that they hadn’t. One-footed, one-paced and one-dimensional, Antony was a one-trick pony. Arjen Robben in slow motion wasn’t actually like Arjen Robben at all.

Then football director John Murtough’s comments about his 22-year-old signing have aged very badly. “Antony is one of the most exciting young talents in European football and has exactly the right profile for the attacking, dynamic team Erik is building,” he said. Murtough may want to retract every element of that but the fundamental fault lay with Erik ten Hag. Murtough’s mistake lay in backing his manager, and to such an extent.

Antony became the face of Ten Hag’s failures; somewhere along the line, most of United’s problems could be traced back to him. The Dutchman’s record in the transfer market was dismal. Antony occupied the biggest chunk of the £600m Ten Hag spent and, largely, wasted. Former manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer thought the Brazilian was worth no more than £30m. United paid £85m.

It became clear Ten Hag displayed an excessive faith in anyone remotely connected to the Netherlands. Others became collateral damage from his fondness for Antony. Nottingham Forest’s Anthony Elanga was sold for a mere £15m and now looks a rather superior player. Ten Hag was too slow to pick Amad Diallo because he was fixated on Antony. Jadon Sancho felt Antony received preferential treatment and if the Englishman was not beyond reproach, he was banished from first-team training while the Brazilian was swiftly brought back into the team after three women made allegations he behaved violently towards them. Antony maintained his innocence, voluntarily attended police interviews in England and Brazil and was not charged. His conduct nevertheless sounded unedifying, to put it mildly.

Meanwhile, Sancho was exiled to Borussia Dortmund and helped them reach a Champions League final. Ten Hag’s insistence it was about standards nevertheless felt undermined by his biggest buy. A player who went on strike to leave Ajax scarcely looked a role model. Antony seemed petulant and self-absorbed. The coaching staff discovered he found it difficult to absorb information; it may be a reason why that, although there was a theory Amorim could reinvent him as a wing-back, he soon decided otherwise.

Ten Hag put faith in Antony but Amorim found tactical issues with the winger (Getty Images)

Tactically, he posed issues. Forever cutting infield from the right flank, he delivered few of the crosses Rasmus Hojlund would probably like. He leaves with a mere three Premier League assists. He was a reason why United scored too few goals; they didn’t create enough. They then appointed a manager, in Amorim, whose system does not feature out-and-out wingers.

Financially, however, Antony was a bigger problem. United’s struggles with PSR are in part because his fee is being amortised at £17m a season on the books (meaning that United are in effect using up £8.5m of the PSR allowance in the time he is at Betis). Their lack of actual funds meant Ten Hag couldn’t bid for Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo in December 2022 or couldn’t afford both Hojlund and a more senior striker the following summer. He never seemed to join the dots to work out where the money went.

By this season, even Ten Hag had given up on him. Since the heady days of those first three games, his United career could be reduced to two highlights: a Europa League winner against Barcelona, and an FA Cup equaliser against Liverpool as Jurgen Klopp’s chances of a quadruple were ended in a game Antony finished at left-back. But he didn’t start a league game this season. Even with everything else that was wrong at United, there was no sense he should.

And one of the most damning indictments is that as he goes when Rashford is out of the picture and maybe soon out on loan, and when Mason Mount is injured. He is leaving without United getting a replacement. They are better off with no one, it seems, than with Antony.