Sir Jim Ratcliffe embraces Bruno Fernandes after the Europa League final.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe (right) knows Manchester United are facing a massive summer.
This time last year Manchester United were gearing up for the start of the summer transfer window having identified just four players within their squad who were not for sale.
This time around, you could not blame United's decision-makers for not putting a hands-off warning on a single member of Ruben Amorim's squad.
Wednesday night's 1-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in the Europa League final in Bilbao meant nothing is salvageable from what has been a wretched campaign. United will end the season without a trophy and potentially just once place above the relegation zone.
As hard as the most upbeat United supporter might look for a positive, it will be an almost impossible task to pluck a single one out of this campaign.
It is why there has never been a better time than this summer for the United hierarchy to gut this squad and be ruthless.
Players such as Victor Lindelof, Jonny Evans and Christian Eriksen need to be released, while the likes of Tyrell Malacia, Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford, Antony and Casemiro should all be sold. United plan to prioritise the sales of Rashford, Sancho and Antony.
Successfully offloading those eight players would be a step in the right direction this summer. However, you could hardly file any of their departures under the definition of a ruthless decision.
Instead, United need to make a statement by offloading one or more of their regular starters, such as Rasmus Hojlund or Alejandro Garnacho. Andre Onana is another who should not be safe from the axe.
Despite plans for outgoings to reach double figures, United, following their failure to qualify for next season's Champions League campaign, are unlikely to have the financial clout to replace those who leave with an adequate level of quality.
Patience is wearing thin with Rasmus Hojlund. (Image: Ion Alcoba Beitia/Getty Images.)
Failure to qualify for Europe's premier club competition could cost United somewhere around £85million, accounting for all of the broadcast money and sponsorship deals.
United do not have a bottomless pit of money to turn to and they are not going to recoup the money they paid for almost all of the players they may end up moving on over the coming months.
To add insult to injury, United owe £89m in transfer fees for players they have signed in previous windows, as confirmed by co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe earlier this year.
"If you look at the players that we will buy this summer that we did not buy, in other words, we're paying for, that it is, we're buying Antony this summer," Ratcliffe told Gary Neville in an interview for Sky. "We're buying Sancho this summer, we're buying Hojlund, we're buying Casemiro, we're buying Onana.
"It's not a light switch. In your day [Neville's], you bought a player and that was it. I know that the bill we will pay this summer is £89m for players that have been signed previously. If we buy no players, we write a cheque for £89m this summer."
Going into this summer's window with the knowledge they must spend £89m in payments relating to previously completed transfers, United's chances of gutting their squad and making the wholesale changes they so desperately need to are slim.
Manchester United are set for a testing summer. (Image: James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images.)
United are lining up three priority signings and are confident Wolves star Matheus Cunha will be one of them. His release clause will set them back £62.5m.
On the face of it, United would be lucky to generate a combined sum close to that figure if they were to sell both Rashford and Antony, highlighting just how big a challenge they are set to face this summer. Qualifying for the Champions League would have boosted their kitty and given Amorim a much bigger budget to play with.
Instead, United's recruitment is going to have to be much more shrewd and calculated. They will not have the scope to take risks and spend beyond their means.
A catalogue of mistakes from yesteryear have now caught up with United and they are going to be made to pay. Their recruitment strategy did improve last summer, both in terms of arrivals and departures, but there is still a long way to go to fix their problems.
This summer, had they secured Champions League qualification, would have been the perfect time to oversee a major rebuild. Instead, United are going to have to spend £89m before they can even think about writing cheques for any new additions.