Pep Guardiola appears set to be reunited with Dani Alves, 34, at Manchester City; Manchester United are playing the waiting game over a possible return for 32-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid. This could turn out to be a transfer summer dominated by veterans.

Alves, with three Champions League titles (all won at Barcelona), and Ronaldo, with four (United and Madrid combined) would head to clubs who have fallen well short in Europe's premier club competition over recent years. Should Wayne Rooney make his expected departure from United this summer, then only Michael Carrick will remain from United's 2007-08 winners, while Guardiola has only Yaya Toure from his own Barcelona 2008-09 team who boasts that medal in their collection at City.

English football's increasingly desperate record in the Champions League has seen the number of players with a lack of experience in the competition's latter stages rise. Only Manchester City in 2015-16 and Chelsea in 2013-14 have reached the semifinals since the Blues were England's last winners in May 2012.

Among the Premier League's five qualifiers for next season's competition, only Gary Cahill and Petr Cech, winners in 2012 with Chelsea, join Carrick as winners of the trophy. The taste of success has become a distant memory, but Alves and Ronaldo can help bring it back.

Whether the Champions League is a priority for clubs beyond the money involved in qualifying may be a significant question, as the Premier League looks inward towards its own highly competitive turf war in which no club has defended the title since 2009. Yet the likes of Guardiola, Mourinho, and Antonio Conte were brought in to establish their clubs as contenders in Europe.

Looking towards experience may be the next step in the process and could be cost effective, too. Alves, still one of the best fullbacks in the game, is expected to cost City just £5 million from Juventus and would join for the two years remaining on Guardiola's contract.

Ronaldo would be priced beyond the £80m United received for him in 2009, but his marketability would pay back the outlay in a short time. Not even Lionel Messi can match Ronaldo's ability to pull in sponsorship and endorsements.

Premier League clubs are now charged eye-watering prices for players of potential, or with more years left on the clock -- the latest quoted for Tottenham's Kyle Walker, 27, is £45m at a time when resale value is a heavy consideration in transfer dealing.

Last summer, United paid £89.3m for a then 23-year-old Paul Pogba from Juventus and waited almost the whole season for him to find his feet. This summer, English clubs are again involved in high-priced auctions. Should any of them steal ahead of Real Madrid for Monaco's 18-year-old striker Kylian Mbappe, then it will cost beyond £100m, while Liverpool must pay around £40m to Roma for Mohamed Salah, a winger who struggled at Chelsea during an 18-month spell in 2014.

Deals like those, with significant risks attached, make United's signing of Zlatan Ibrahimovic on a free transfer last summer look a bargain. The Swede may have been paid a salary reported to be £19m-per-year for his single season in Manchester, and had his contribution ended by a knee injury suffered in April, but his 28 goals were invaluable to Mourinho and helped change the culture at United back to winning silverware.

The logic of that deal appears to have been followed lower down the Premier League by Bournemouth's imminent addition of the 34-year-old Jermain Defoe on a lucrative two-year deal. Like Ibrahimovic, Defoe has preserved his physique and will all but guarantee goals. Meanwhile, the host of clubs interested in 36-year-old veteran John Terry's signature suggests an expectation that the wealth of the Chelsea legend's experience can rub off on younger players now he has left Stamford Bridge.

Buying in experienced talent once used to be commonplace in English football.

Twenty years ago this month, Sir Alex Ferguson bought a 31-year-old Teddy Sheringham to replace Eric Cantona at United, and play alongside younger strikers Andy Cole and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. In 2000, Liverpool signed Gary McAllister, 35, from Coventry, and the playmaker helped inspire Gerard Houllier's team to win an FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup treble.

Further back than that, Leeds United twice bought experienced Scots -- Bobby Collins, 31, in 1962; and Gordon Strachan, 32, in 1989 -- to inspire teams that would eventually win league titles in 1969 and 1992 respectively.

In an age where clubs increasingly risk spending over £40m on young players who are not guaranteed to be a success, perhaps now is the time to revive the practice of signing proven winners. 

Source:
courtesy of ESPNFC

by JOHN BREWIN

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