Martinez's complaint and the uneven legacy of United's 2022 rebuild
Lisandro Martinez's criticism of Manchester United's transfer strategy invites a look back at the five other players signed in his arrival window, and what their fates reveal about recruitment under Erik ten Hag.
Lisandro Martinez's public complaint about Manchester United's investment, made after the defeat to Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, was aimed at director of football Jason Wilcox, according to Planet Football.
But the Argentine himself arrived in a transfer window that offers a useful case study in how United tried to rebuild a squad in 2022, and how unevenly that rebuild has aged.
Six players joined that summer. Looking at where each has ended up shows a club that got its positional priorities broadly right but badly misjudged execution in at least one key area: the wide forward line.
A winger signing that never matched the role
Antony was bought from Ajax for £82m to fill a right-wing or inverted-forward role under Ten Hag, a fee that made him United's third most expensive signing in the club's history, per Planet Football.
The underlying output never supported that price. He had scored eight Eredivisie goals in his final season in Amsterdam and left with 18 in 57 league appearances, hardly the record of an elite attacking threat.
At United his end product collapsed further: four league goals in his first season, then just one the following year despite more minutes, a decline that points to a player miscast for the physical and tactical demands of the Premier League rather than simply out of form.
A loan to Real Betis in the second half of 2024-25 restored some of his effectiveness, and Betis made the move permanent in 2025 for £21.65m. The gap between the original fee and that resale figure is as stark a measure of recruitment failure as any goals tally.
Squad roles that were actually solved
Contrast that with Casemiro, signed to anchor the defensive-midfield base in front of a back four that had looked exposed without a true holding presence. That positional fix worked: he became, among other things, a genuine set-piece weapon, scoring a club-record nine headed goals in a single season before leaving for Inter Miami in 2026, where he has continued scoring in MLS.
Christian Eriksen, signed on a free transfer to add a creative passing presence in central midfield, never reproduced the control he showed at Tottenham, but 107 appearances with eight goals and 19 assists represented reasonable value against zero transfer outlay, a different calculus from the fee-driven disappointment of Antony. He was relegated with Wolfsburg last season and is now without a club.
Depth signings that reveal the limits of squad planning
Tyrell Malacia and Martin Dubravka were squad-depth additions rather than first-choice solutions, and both illustrate how such signings tend to be judged less harshly in isolation but still fail to deliver lasting value.
Malacia, a left-back bought for £13m to provide competition in that position, managed only 50 appearances across four years, was loaned back to PSV in 2024-25 without a permanent move following, played just three Premier League games last season, and left as a free agent to join FC Cincinnati, where he has made one appearance.
Dubravka arrived on loan from Newcastle purely as goalkeeper cover, played two League Cup games, and departed within a year, later moving to Burnley to replace James Trafford and then to Tottenham as backup. His short, low-impact stay is exactly what a depth signing at goalkeeper is meant to be: unremarkable by design.
What the pattern says about the current complaint
Taken together, the six signings show a recruitment strategy that identified the right categories of need: a holding midfielder, a creative free-transfer option, goalkeeper and full-back cover, and a wide attacking outlet. Four of those five roles were filled competently or better.
The one clear miss, Antony, was also the most expensive by a wide margin, which is precisely why it carries disproportionate weight in any retrospective judgement of that window and, by extension, in arguments like the one Martinez has now made about United's current spending.
The loan system used for Malacia, Dubravka and eventually Antony also stands out as a recurring mechanism: when a signing stalls, United have repeatedly reached for a loan away before either reintegrating or selling, a pattern visible across three of the six names from that summer alone.
Martinez's criticism concerns present-day investment under Wilcox, not this 2022 cohort specifically. But the spread of outcomes from that window, one marquee failure, one standout success in Casemiro, two reasonable results in Eriksen and Dubravka, and one unresolved full-back gamble in Malacia, is the kind of mixed record that fuels exactly the debate he has reopened.