People saying we could've sold him for 10M last summer, but fecked up....but there's actually no real evidence to support that, is there? Other than tabloid gossip I mean. There can be a lot of reasons why he didn't leave before, not least the previous manager wanted to keep him (inexplicably), or his wage demands were too high, when coupled with the transfer fee. I mean, I am all for bashing the piss poor management of the club, but sometimes people just take swings without any actual facts. They have already made their mind up.
Glad he's another piece of dead wood out the door. That's another 3M a year or so saved on wages. Plus the 5M or so we've saved on Smalling's wages. And the 9M we've saved on Sanchez wages, 6m we've saved on Fellaini's, and 5M odd on Herrera, 8.5M on Lukaku, 6M on Valencia, and the 3M loan fee from Roma for Smalling, is a 45.5M p/a savings on wages. Then we've added around 16M in Maguire, AWB, and James, and perhaps an extra 3M for Rashford's renewal, we have conservatively shaved 25M or so off our wage bill. The club has fecked up a lot, but at least something has been done right this summer. Assuming they reinvest over January and then next summer.
One thing I didn't calculate in the wages adjustment is the 25% reduction most players face for no CL qualifications. So our wage bill should be down even further.