It would be a shame to let Ander leave on a free transfer, but absolutely not the end of the world. He is a bang average player with perfect mentality that always puts in a good shift in midfield, and compensates his somewhat lacking abilities by always giving 100%. I absolutely love Ander as a character, but we have to be ruthless if we are to improve the quality of our starting 11. We have similar situations with Mata and Valencia, both of which will probably leave on free transfers.
To put this the other way around, most fans would absolutely slaughter the club management if we were to bring in a 29 year old midfielder with 2 caps for his national team. If we are going to compete with the likes of Barcelona, who have midfielders that are nailed in the Spain starting 11, we cannot use Ander Herrera that isn't even anywhere near the squad. Spain has picked a 23 man squad for their upcoming games, and Herrera wasn't even in the discussion. I am not even sure that he would be included that if they were to pick an additional set of 23 players.