Fellaini was not Thiago Alcantara or Toni Kroos or Cesc Fabregas or any of United’s other transfer targets, and so in many ways he was damned from the start. “He wasn’t meant to be our only signing at United that summer,” Moyes later wrote in the Mail on Sunday. “He was brought in to complement the squad and the other players we were hoping to bring in. Unfortunately, he was the only player we brought in. It meant he was under more pressure than he should have been.”