Manchester United will bank another major windfall courtesy of Mason Greenwood if he leaves Marseille this summer. Rumours in France indicate that he could do just that in the wake of manager Roberto De Zerbi publicly criticising his lack of consistency and dropping him to the bench.
Only Ousmane Dembele has scored more Ligue 1 goals than Greenwood this term as he chases down the Golden Boot in his first season at Marseille. The 23-year-old has netted 15 times and racked up three assists in a barnstorming introduction to French football, but he has been left out of the starting XI for each of the last two matches, including 'Le Classique' against Paris Saint-Germain on Sunday.
Greenwood was given less than half an hour in the defeat to PSG after a 45-minute cameo against Lens the previous weekend. And murmurs around the clinical forward looking for a way out are starting to gather pace in France.
PSG, Bayern Munich and Barcelona have all been linked with the former England man, who has already netted United big money. Greenwood fetched £26.6million when he left Old Trafford to join Marseille last summer, and there was a massive 50% sell-on clause inserted as part of the deal.
That means United will be due half of any transfer fee Marseille receive for their star forward, who is valued at just under £30m by Transfermarkt but could go for significantly more.
Another large windfall would be warmly welcomed at Old Trafford, where INEOS chief Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been unable to back new manager Ruben Amorim in the transfer market. Patrick Dorgu was the only senior player United signed in January, when reinforcements were desperately required.
PSR limits have forced United to keep spending on a tight leash since the days of frivolous transfer splurges under former boss Erik ten Hag. Ratcliffe recently explained why running into the kind of money Greenwood could make for them this summer would be so important.
"If you look at the players we are buying this summer, that we didn't buy, we are [paying instalments for] Antony, Casemiro, Andre Onana, Rasmus Hojlund, Jadon Sancho," he told BBC Sport.
"These are all things from the past but whether we like it or not we have inherited those things and we have to sort it out. For Sancho, who obviously now plays for Chelsea, and we pay half his wages, we are paying £17m to buy him in the summer. So it takes time for us to move away from the past into a new place in the future."