Looking back at last summer’s transfer window, and I genuinely think United quietly had one of the best windows in football.
Not because we signed the biggest names. Not because every issue in the squad was magically solved overnight. And definitely not because this suddenly became a perfect team. We are still Man United after all, so chaos remains somewhere around the corner waiting patiently for its moment.
But when you step back and look at what actually happened, it becomes difficult to ignore just how important that window may have been.
Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo, Senne Lammens and Benjamin Sesko have all, to varying degrees, been successes.
Not flawless successes. Not season-defining, league-breaking, statue-outside-Old-Trafford levels of brilliance. But successful enough that when you look at them collectively, something starts to stand out.
They all made sense.
And if you have supported United for long enough, you will know that sentence alone feels oddly refreshing.
For years, transfer windows often felt disconnected, reactive or just outright confusing. One player looked like a commercial move, another looked like somebody signed because a rival wanted him, and somewhere in the middle there would be a transfer that had supporters collectively asking the same question: “Fine… but why?”
This time felt different.
There appeared to be actual logic to it.
Each player arrived to solve a problem. Each player fit a need. And perhaps most importantly, each player improved the team in a way that felt tangible rather than theoretical.
Take the numbers alone and there is already a decent argument to be made.
Lammens has emerged as one of the bargains of the season while Cunha, Mbeumo and Sesko have all hit double figures in their debut campaigns. In fact, that front three became only the second in Premier League history to all score 10+ goals in their first season. And that says a lot. Even if none of them have had flawless years, the overall trajectory is obvious.
Mbeumo looked like one of our players of the season before his recent dip in form. Cunha started slower than many hoped but has increasingly begun to resemble the disruptive, aggressive player we saw at Wolves. Sesko, despite arriving for a hefty fee has become United’s top scorer with 11 goals.
Not bad at all.
And then there is Senne Lammens.
Honestly, where do you even begin?
When United signed an unknown young goalkeeper from Royal Antwerp for £18m, excitement was not exactly pouring through the streets. Nobody was making dramatic compilation videos. Nobody was calling him the future of the club after watching a seven-minute YouTube clip with cinematic music in the background.
Most fans landed somewhere between:
“Interesting.”
And:
“I am going to pretend I know who this guy is.”
Yet what he has done since arriving cannot be overstated.
Not because he suddenly became prime Manuel Neuer overnight, but because he has done something that somehow became revolutionary for a United goalkeeper in recent years:
The basics.
He catches crosses.
He commands his box.
He looks calm under pressure.
He makes saves that you would expect a Premier League goalkeeper to make, which somehow became a novelty at Old Trafford.
The funny thing is, all Lammens has really done is restore trust. And that trust leads to confidence which spreads throughout the team.
There is a noticeable calmness about the side now that simply did not exist before. The defence looks more settled. The crowd looks less anxious every time the opposition enters our half. Players no longer seem terrified at the idea of recycling possession instead of booting the ball into orbit.
In a strange way, his impact reminds me of Edwin van der Sar’s arrival in 2005.
No, before anyone loses their minds, I am not saying Lammens is Van der Sar. Let us all relax.
But there is a similar feeling.
Van der Sar instantly brought order after years of instability following Peter Schmeichel. Lammens has done something comparable emotionally. He has restored belief in a position that had become defined by uncertainty.
Even David de Gea, brilliant as he eventually became, did not immediately stabilise things in that way.
And this is where the bigger point begins to emerge.
What United may have accidentally done through this transfer window is raise expectation.
Not expectation in the unrealistic sense where every signing now has to become world class. Football simply does not work like that. Some players plateau, some regress, and some begin brilliantly before fading away.
That is football.
But what supporters now expect is competence.
A transfer window where signings feel connected to an actual football idea. Players who fit what the team needs instead of who generates the loudest reaction online. Recruitment that looks proactive rather than reactive.
That, more than anything, feels like the biggest shift.
When you really look at these four players, every single one solved a problem.
Let us start with the obvious one: goalkeeper.
I genuinely do not think it is exaggeration to say you or I could have inspired more confidence than André Onana and Altay Bayindir.
Onana, for all his experience, crumbled under the pressure of the number one shirt. Bayindir never looked remotely convincing. Together, they turned every opposition attack into an event.
Lammens came in and, without making a fuss, fixed a huge part of that instability simply by being dependable.
Sesko solved another obvious issue.
United desperately needed a reliable goalscorer.
We had seen enough to know Rasmus Højlund was struggling and Joshua Zirkzee, while talented in his own way, still looks like somebody trying to convince us he is a United striker rather than actually being one.
Sesko arrived from Leipzig carrying a sizeable fee and plenty of expectation, but also genuine pedigree. He had already shown in Germany that he was one of Europe’s better young strikers and exactly the type of player you regret passing on when another club inevitably turns him into a monster.
Has he been perfect? No.
Does he refining? Absolutely.
But 11 goals and an 18% conversion rate, the highest in the squad, tells its own story.
Cunha and Mbeumo perhaps tell the story best.
Neither were blockbuster signings in the traditional United sense. Nobody was queueing outside Old Trafford to buy shirts because of the marketing power alone. These were football decisions.
Good footballers. Reliable footballers.
Players signed because they suited what the team lacked.
And together, they have changed the attack.
We went from Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho and Antony to a front line of Cunha, Mbeumo and Sesko.
That tells you everything.
Both Cunha and Mbeumo were clearly bought with Ruben Amorim’s 3-4-3 in mind, yet what has been encouraging is seeing them adapt, to some extent, under Michael Carrick’s 4-2-3-1.
That matters because good recruitment should survive managerial tweaks.
Bad recruitment only works in one very specific environment before immediately collapsing under scrutiny.
United have been guilty of the latter far too often.
For once, this felt like squad building rather than impulse shopping.
What also stands out is how this window has quietly shifted the balance of the squad.
For so long, United felt like a team built around individual output. Bruno Fernandes carrying creativity, Bruno Fernandes carrying chances, Bruno Fernandes basically carrying the idea that something might happen if he is involved. At times it felt less like a team structure and more like a one-man contingency plan.
That still exists to a degree, of course. Old habits do not disappear overnight.
But there is now at least evidence of something else forming alongside it.
A front line that can function without everything running through one player.
A goal in the Everton match summed it up nicely. Cunha picks up the ball and plays a brilliant pass into the space for Mbeumo. He then makes picks up the ball and before playing a simple pass into Sesko who does the rest.
And this is where the broader picture becomes difficult to ignore.
This group of signings has not turned United into a finished product. Not even close. There are still issues in midfield structure, defensive consistency and game control that will not disappear because of one decent window.
But what it has done is something more subtle and arguably more important.
It has raised the baseline.
The floor of the squad is higher. And because of that, expectations are now shifting whether the club intended it or not.
That is the real consequence here.
Just a slow adjustment in what is considered acceptable.
When United fans look at future windows now, the conversation has already changed. It is no longer just “who have we signed?” It is becoming “does this make sense?”, “does this improve us?”, “does this actually fit what we are trying to do?”
And that shift alone is significant.
When a club shows it can recruit like this, even once, the excuses that used to buy time start to disappear.
You cannot point to chaos forever if there is evidence of structure.
You cannot justify panic buys if planning has clearly worked before.
And you definitely cannot lower expectations once supporters have seen what competence looks like.
That is the uncomfortable part for the club.
Success in recruitment, even partial success, creates pressure.
Not immediately, but gradually.
Quietly, but firmly.
And that brings us to the real conclusion of all this.
This window does not need to be remembered as perfect. It does not need to be remembered as revolutionary. It just needs to be remembered as a turning point in how United approach recruitment.
Whether it was intentional or not, the bar has moved, and once the bar moves, it does not move back easily.
The next transfer window is now judged against this one.
That is the standard.
That is the expectation.
And that is the pressure that comes with finally doing things properly, even if only for a single summer.
So the real test is no longer what happened last window.
It is whether this becomes the norm.
Or just another brief moment of competence in a club that can never quite afford to rely on them.
Benjamin Sesko, Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo and Senne Lammens | Image vis Manchester United official X (@ManUtd)