Manchester United are set to sell a number of their big earners this summer as part of a clear out
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Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim
Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim is hoping for a busy summer transfer window at Old Trafford
(Image: Alex Caparros - UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
As soon as the final whistle was sounded in Bilbao last week, preparations for what Manchester United had to do in order to reverse their fortunes next season were already underway.
Defeat in the final of the Europa League to Tottenham Hotspur denied United a spot in the Champions League and the potential revenue pot of some £120m that comes with it, and left the club without any kind of European revenue to rely on next season following a dismal campaign where they finished 15th, the worst season for the Red Devils in 51 years.
There is much work to be done at Old Trafford, and club co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who acquired a 27.7% stake in the club back in December 2023 for £1.2bn, has already embarked on brutal cost cutting through redundancies, and the lack of additional revenue from Europe next season will mean that the £100m transfer budget for the summer that has been mooted will need to be supplemented by some effective player trading.
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It has been widely reported that there are no players who aren’t available to leave if the right offer comes in, and that includes the likes of Kobbie Mainoo, while the most likely contenders to head out of the exit door are the likes of Marcus Rashford, Antony and Jadon Sancho. There are also question marks that exist over the futures of Alejandro Garnacho, Tyrell Malacia, Casemiro and Rasmus Hojlund.
The Manchester Evening News understands the club have no intention of selling Bruno Fernandes to Saudi Arabia, although speculation over his future persists. United need to realise some profit in the summer on the sales of players.
With the likely arrival of Matheus Cunha from Wolverhampton Wanderers for £62.5m and Liam Delap of Ipswich Town being a prime target and having a £30m release clause, that £100m can get swallowed up pretty quickly. United’s needs run far deeper that just two additions, and in order to add in other areas to not only improve competitiveness but also to replace players who will be leaving the squad and leaving it thinner, they will need to raise the extra funds themselves through player trading.
But how much profit might they be expected to make in the current market?
When a player is signed for a club their guaranteed transfer fee is accounted for via amortisation, which is the fee divided over the length of contract, capped at a maximum of five years. That figure goes down each year of a contract until they no longer hold any remaining book value for the football club.
When a club sells a player, to realise any profit on the deal they must first clear the book value that remains of the player. In the case of academy graduates that have come through the club’s own system, there is no book value to be had and sales can immediately be booked in their entirety as pure profit.
For United, the sales of Rashford, Mainoo and Garnacho would all count as pure profit from an accounting perspective and would enable the club to significantly improve their financial situation, although the need would remain for them to bring in replacements. The noises from United are that the market they are looking at will be cheaper undervalued talent after they have completed their acquisitions of Cunha and potentially Delap.
What they want to receive and what they can realistically expect will likely be two different things this summer, with the poor performance of the club and players, where players have been sent out on loan or fallen out of favour, meaning that the market value has diminished and United have minimal leverage. Other clubs know the situation at Old Trafford, they know they need to sell to buy and they know that there is no position of strength in negotiations on the United side.
The Manchester Evening News understands Rashford carries a £40m price tag, while the Telegraph reports Garnacho is valued at £60m. But with such major wages for Rashford to factor in, and Garnacho now apparently frozen out of plans by United boss Ruben Amorim and told to find a new club, more reasonable estimates of £25m and £40m seem appropriate in real terms. To fall somewhere in between, £30m and £50m sales would deliver £80m in profit for Manchester United. Add to that a potential Mainoo exit, who is valued by Transfermarkt at £45m, would take sales to £125m.
But those fees seem high, especially given that analysts at Swiss-based CIES Football Observatory, which uses a variety of scientific methods to evaluate transfer market value, has Hojlund as the only United player to have a market value above £60m.
But Hojlund is one of the players that United will reportedly listen to offers for. The club paid £72m for the Danish forward from Italian side Atalanta in 2023. It was a five-year deal that amortised as £14.4m per year. He has spent two years at the club meaning he has a remaining book value of £43.2m, and United would have to clear that first before making any kind of profit. Given his poor season it is hard to imagine he commands a £43m price tag, or that there would be many willing spenders at that fee.
Then there is Antony. United’s decision to send him on loan to Real Betis has paid off, with the Brazilian finding good form away from Old Trafford, something that will have positively impacted his transfer value. But having paid £82m for him three years ago, and with a remaining book value of around £32m, United would likely still make a loss, albeit probably a smaller one than had been expected. A valuation of £25m to £30m seems to be the market consensus.
Casemiro was another major arrival for big money, signed for £70m three years ago. With a remaining book value of £17.5m after he arrived on a four-year deal, means that the club would almost certainly take a loss given his age and fact he has just one year remaining on his deal. A move to Saudi Arabia might potentially offer them a route to break even, but someone would have to be willing to stump up his reported £350,000 per week, or at least be close to it.
Players like Malacia, given the relatively small outlay of £14.7m in 2022, could deliver a small profit for United given he only has a book value remaining of £3.7m on his four-year deal. That would likely be recouped and profit made. But it wouldn’t change the game for United.
In the case of Sancho, whose loan spell at Chelsea has been indifferent, he was signed for £73m in 2021. His book value will stand at around £14.6m, and with a tag of £25m they will be aiming to turn a small profit, although it remains to be seen whether Chelsea will take that option up or take the £5m penalty for not signing him as per the loan agreement. His wages are significant at a reported £350,000 per week (£18.2m per year) and adding those kind of wages off the bill to Casemiro, Garnacho and Rashford could shave some £50m per year off the wage bill that can be reinvested into cheaper talent with a high ceiling.
Fernandes has been linked with an exit, with rumours of Saudi clubs being willing to part with as much as £80m for the 31-year-old Portuguese. That seems far fetched given his age and profile. He would make a profit for United on any significant sale, and if offered such a sum it would be near impossible to turn down, but he remains United’s most talismanic figure.
The profit for United this summer will come from selling home grown players, and the lack of profit to come from selling players they have recruited in recent years speaks to just how poor that recruitment has been, and how profligate they have been with transfer funds.
They will need to sell their pure profit players, while the sale of big earners will clear space in the wage bill. All told it could allow United another £120m or so to put to work over and adove the committed £100m, but would give them little time to do it.
It remains a work in process that will require several windows to unpick the financial and competitive damage that has been done over a number of years worth of bad decisions.