Manchester United have made a bold stance in the January transfer window, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe ready to offload key players to try and overhaul Ruben Amorim’s squad
Manchester United will listen to serious offers for any of their first-team squad this month, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe ready to make radical changes to overhaul their underperforming squad.
Ratcliffe has been open with his opinion of United’s wasteful recruitment in recent years and believes they need to make sacrifices. United are 13th in the Premier League and have gone four matches without a win under Ruben Amorim.
Amorim has already been told that he will be working with a limited transfer budget after the club splashed £600million on players for his predecessor Erik ten Hag. It means that he has no chance of landing his top transfer target Viktor Gyokeres in the January window, with the Swede commanding a £80m release clause.
To make matters worse, Amorim could be about to lose some of his key players, with the club ready to consider offers for a number of key players. The Guardian reports that young stars Kobbie Mainoo, Alejandro Garnacho and Rasmus Hojlund are now expendable, despite having been deemed untouchable under Ten Hag. The publication also claims that the club would be open to ‘serious offers’ for any of Amorim’s squad.
Mainoo and Garnacho are considered homegrown players, having come through the United academy, so would be particularly valuable sales in the age of profit and sustainability rules. Mainoo is unsettled, having grown frustrated with the lack of movement on a new contract, which was first suggested in May.
The 19-year-old is being paid just £20,000 per week at his boyhood club and knows he could earn a great deal more elsewhere. Chelsea are among the clubs keeping an eye on the situation, knowing they could take advantage of United’s dire situation.
INEOS will not ring-fence any assets this month, meaning summer signings Leny Yoro, Noussair Mazraoui, Matthijs de Ligt, Manuel Ugarte and Joshua Zirkzee could be offloaded after just six months at the club. Ideally, it would be overpaid and underperforming players like Marcus Rashford, Casemiro and Antony who are moved on, but buyers for such players are not easy to find.
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PSR rules are a real concern for United, who posted losses before tax of £312.9m over the past three seasons. A recent report showed United have racked up a staggering net spend of €1.3bn (£1.08bn) since 2015, more than any other club in the world. Ratcliffe has been busy making unpopular cuts across the board since taking over, making 250 people redundant, while sacking Sir Alex Ferguson from his club ambassador role.
Speaking last month, the petrochemicals billionaire told the United We Stand fanzine: ” Manchester United has become mediocre. It is supposed to be one of the best football clubs in the world. We have to make some difficult and unpopular decisions. If you shy away from the difficult decisions, then nothing much is going to change.”
He added: “I know we get criticism in the press, but we do need to challenge the cost of running this club because what I want to be free for us to do is buy really good footballers, not spend so much of the money on infrastructure. We can’t run a business at a loss, which is where United have been in the last couple of years.”
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