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Manchester United have reportedly decided not to meet Nottingham Forest’s asking price for Elliot Anderson, raising the question of when the club will finally surpass its long-standing transfer record.

In a rare display of financial restraint, United are refusing to engage in a bidding contest with Manchester City for Anderson, seemingly having learned from past mistakes when such battles led them to end up with players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Alexis Sanchez, or Fred on inflated deals.

This situation highlights an interesting fact — Manchester United hold the oldest unbroken transfer record among current Premier League clubs. The £93.2 million paid for Paul Pogba in August 2016 remains the highest fee in the club’s history.

No other top-flight team has gone longer without breaking their own transfer record. Everton come the closest, having last set theirs a year later with the £40 million signing of Gylfi Sigurdsson in August 2017.

To find clubs with an older record than United’s, one must look to the Championship, where former Premier League sides carry the legacy of expensive signings from their top-flight days.

Six months before United re-signed Pogba for a world-record fee, another French midfielder with rising potential, Giannelli Imbula, joined Stoke City in the Premier League.

At the time, Stoke chairman Peter Coates said, “If he is as good as we think he is, he’ll keep his value. You’ve got to think of it from a business point of view. We want him to be worth more than we paid for him.”

That optimism was misplaced. Imbula’s contract was mutually terminated four years later after failing to live up to expectations.

Stoke had spent £18.3 million on him. By the end of his first full season, manager Mark Hughes admitted, “If there is interest in him, we would consider that,” before adding, “We haven’t had any interest, in fairness.”

Imbula made just 28 appearances, went out on loan three times, missed Stoke’s relegation season, and even once substituted himself during a match after Charlie Adam didn’t pass him the ball.

At Queens Park Rangers, Harry Redknapp described Christopher Samba as “just what we need. He’s a monster” when announcing his signing — a move that was expected to help QPR avoid relegation.

Over at Anzhi Makhachkala, club director German Tkachenko expressed disbelief, saying, “QPR have lost their minds. When they agreed to pay his release fee we wept. He [Samba] wept.”

Anzhi pocketed £12.5 million for a defender on a four-and-a-half-year deal worth £100,000 a week, with a clause ensuring his pay remained unchanged even in case of relegation.

That clause soon came into effect as QPR won just twice and kept one clean sheet in Samba’s ten Premier League appearances. The player, fed up with criticism over his wages, told fans to “get over it.”

Within five months, Anzhi refunded QPR the full transfer amount. Ironically, the Russian club itself was dissolved in 2022 due to financial troubles and now operates semi-professionally in the country’s fifth tier.

Redknapp was also in charge at Portsmouth when they made their record signing, and financial recklessness followed him there too. Peter Crouch later admitted he had doubts about how the club could afford such a strong squad, saying, “It did occur to me how a club of that size could afford a team that good.”

Portsmouth paid £11 million for Crouch, but after just one season, he moved to Tottenham Hotspur to reunite with Redknapp. Within seven months of his departure, and after selling players like Glen Johnson, Sylvain Distin, Lauren, Sol Campbell, and Djimi Traore, Portsmouth became the first Premier League club to enter administration.

Andy Cole’s remarkable career saw him become the record signing for four clubs between 1992 and 2002. Although those records have since been surpassed at Bristol City, Newcastle United, and Manchester United, his final big-money move still stands as Blackburn Rovers’ most expensive signing.

That transfer was partly driven by reduced playing time at Old Trafford due to the arrivals of Juan Sebastian Veron and Ruud van Nistelrooy, and by Cole’s ambition to earn a spot in England’s squad for the upcoming World Cup.

He scored 13 goals in 20 matches during a blistering first half-season for Rovers, including the winner in the Worthington Cup final, but was ultimately left out of Sven-Goran Eriksson’s squad for the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

Despite that disappointment, Cole remains one of the finest English players never to have featured in a World Cup or European Championship.

Jason Euell once reflected, “I knew what I was about and knew what I could do. It is the clubs that agreed that price to get me from one to another.”

Charlton Athletic had previously failed with a £5 million offer following Wimbledon’s 2000 relegation, but eventually secured Euell for £4.75 million after his prolific season in the First Division. He went on to become Charlton’s all-time top Premier League goalscorer, netting in memorable victories over Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool under Alan Curbishley.

It remains uncertain whether Sir Bobby Robson genuinely wanted to sign Euell instead of Carl Cort, but the record stands as a fascinating footnote in English football’s transfer history.