Ugarte appears to be out the door this summer

Ugarte has won just once in 10 starts all season.

The run includes six defeats and draws to all of the promoted sides.

It also looks even worse when extended back to March 2025.

In that time Ugarte has started 14 Premier League matches, losing nine and winning only one.
It was under Amorim mind. Some serious mitigating circumstances. Obviously a piss poor stat though.
 
The reality is he’s just not technical enough for top level football. Every time he gets on the ball you can see the panic. The passing is safe, sideways and slow, he can’t control tempo, he can’t play through pressure. He looks like a destroyer from 1995 trying to survive in modern football.

And the funniest/saddest part is PSG literally warned us already.

Luis Enrique took one look at him and basically said “nah not for me.” A manager obsessed with technical security and ball progression didn’t trust him because Ugarte simply doesn’t have the quality on the ball required for possession football. The signs were there for everyone to see, but somehow we ignored them anyway because apparently sprinting into tackles still impresses people.

What makes the deal look even worse is that we basically funded PSG getting Joao Neves, who is everything Ugarte isn’t. Calm under pressure, progressive, intelligent, technically elite and actually suited for modern football.

This transfer has been a huge failure. The worrying part is that this isn’t an attitude problem that can be fixed, it’s a lack of talent problem. He tries hard, but the talent level simply isn’t there for an elite league, never mind Manchester United.

Honestly I don’t even think we’ll be able to sell him properly because who’s realistically taking him? It could genuinely become another Van de Beek situation where we basically end up giving him away just to get him off the wage bill.

Our best chance is probably loaning him out to a lower-level league like Portugal, the Netherlands or maybe Italy with an obligation or option to buy if he hits a certain number of appearances. That’s realistically the only way I can see us getting rid of him.
 
I think we're more in to bluffing these days, so this is quite possibly just a corrective leak following the 'Ratcliffe wants him out' one.

No idea if these silly games matter but we've been acting like they do a bit more lately.

Think we'll hawk him around to be honest.
 
Manuel, do you want the good or bad news first? Okay. I want to you to be the first to know that you’re going absolutely nowhere this summer….
 
I think he was a Mendes favor in some ways, so i’d expect Mendes can pull a favor elsewhere.
Juve, Gala someone like that.
 
If we can't sell him, at least loan him out for the season so he can get gametime and perhaps increase his value for the 26/27 summer window. We should get three midfielders in regardless, and I'd much rather give game time to Jim Thwaites over Ugarte, who seems to be a liability in every cameo.
 
He just is not very good at football.

Which you would think would be a concern seeing as that is his job.
 
Not his fault really that the club paid £40m+ on him, we might be stuck with him unless we loan him out or sell him on the cheap to make space.
 

I know people don't like the idea of this but I'm not 100 percent against it. Say we sign Tchouameni and Mateus Fernandes. Then we'll have them two and Mainoo with Ugarte as the fourth guy. He's not great but there have been spells he's been ok like in the Europa league in 2024/25. He can play in cup games and as an emergency option.
I'm not convinced we'll actually buy three top class CMs considering we probably need to sign a left back to cover Shaw especially as Carrick has been playing Dorgu as a left winger. We probably also would need to replace Zirkzee with someone more competent, I think that extra offensive threat that could help in cup games and off the bench considering the increased number of games we're going to be playing.
 
I put Samuel Luckhurst above Jamie Jackson in my list of "Bullshit Shitehawks Who Know Feck All And Make Shite Up For Drama" and that's really saying something.
Notoriously, pigeons are the shitehawks mortal enemy, so maybe a bias from you.
 
No concrete links to any club so far despite being on the periphery all season.. Makes me think it'll be hard to shift him. It's more likely he stays than leaves.
 
I think we’ve learned a little bit from last season and are using the media better. So instead of showing our desperation, potentially lowering the price, we’re playing it neutral.

Puts the onus more on the player, agent and maybe club’s showing interest to come up closer to our valuation initially.
 
No concrete links to any club so far despite being on the periphery all season.. Makes me think it'll be hard to shift him. It's more likely he stays than leaves.
World Cup year, Uruguay usually do well and let's pray he does well enough to attract a buyer from the PL. Otherwise it will be loan after loan until his cotract expires.
 
I think he'll 100% playing for a different club next season. There's no chance he's still here.
Completely agree. Carrick wasn’t having any of him the last few weeks of the season (and barely anything before that Leeds game when Mainoo was out either).

He’s clearly got no future here. Time for Mendes to get to work and find him something elsewhere. I do think a loan is most likely though.
 
He won't be sold because there's no chance we'll even get the required amount for him to break even. He'll be loaned and that break even amount goes down next season. If he's loaned to the right club in the right league I actually do think he has a chance to compel the club that loans him to make it permanent the same way Hoijland did at Napoli.
 
Completely agree. Carrick wasn’t having any of him the last few weeks of the season (and barely anything before that Leeds game when Mainoo was out either).

He’s clearly got no future here. Time for Mendes to get to work and find him something elsewhere. I do think a loan is most likely though.

Aye.

You could tell right away Carrick didn't rate him. I think combined under Amorim and Fletcher he'd started about 6 or 7 games in a row and then the minute Carrick came in he rightly stopped all that and brought Mainoo back instead.

Now we're hearing we want to sign 3 or 4 midfielders, he's not going to want to be 5th or 6th choice in midfield. He'll definitely be off. Like you said, I think we'll struggle to actually get a permanent deal for him but he won't play for Utd again.
 
It sounds like he checked out halfway through this season judging by his recent interview. Carrick obviously doesn't rate him. He will be sold.
 
I think we’ve learned a little bit from last season and are using the media better. So instead of showing our desperation, potentially lowering the price, we’re playing it neutral.

Puts the onus more on the player, agent and maybe club’s showing interest to come up closer to our valuation initially.

Yeah, but it’s pretty clear though. He’s getting no minutes and, according to Mitten, is the first back home from training, so the club briefing that he may stay indicates a complete lack of interest, for if there was random Turkish club interested we’d be using that to try to bring others in too, but there’s been nothing.

Hopefully he has a great World Cup .
 
Aye.

You could tell right away Carrick didn't rate him. I think combined under Amorim and Fletcher he'd started about 6 or 7 games in a row and then the minute Carrick came in he rightly stopped all that and brought Mainoo back instead.

Now we're hearing we want to sign 3 or 4 midfielders, he's not going to want to be 5th or 6th choice in midfield. He'll definitely be off. Like you said, I think we'll struggle to actually get a permanent deal for him but he won't play for Utd again.
I don't think Amorim or Fletcher rated him either, we just had an injury crisis and Mainoo got fit around the time Carrick came in (convenient, but not going to think that Mainoo was keeping himself out of the matchday squad when he was fit).
 
Yeah, but it’s pretty clear though. He’s getting no minutes and, according to Mitten, is the first back home from training, so the club briefing that he may stay indicates a complete lack of interest, for if there was random Turkish club interested we’d be using that to try to bring others in too, but there’s been nothing.

Hopefully he has a great World Cup .
I would definitely say it’s clear that he isn’t favoured by the manager and that a parting of ways would benefit both parties. Other than that it’s speculation really. On the flip of what you said a club could have enquired/offered but the sum was so low the loss wasn’t acceptable.

Like you say though hopefully he has a great World Cup, teams see his value again and we recoup what we can.

For me it’s definitely better than the approach we took with others last season.
 
I don't think Amorim or Fletcher rated him either, we just had an injury crisis and Mainoo got fit around the time Carrick came in (convenient, but not going to think that Mainoo was keeping himself out of the matchday squad when he was fit).

I forgot that Mainoo was injured at the time so you make a fair point.

I still think Amorim would have gone Ugarte over Mainoo if both were fit because he seemed to have a bizarre dislike of Mainoo and Amorim was a moron. It's very clear though that Carrick definitely doesn't rate Ugarte.
 
I put Samuel Luckhurst above Jamie Jackson in my list of "Bullshit Shitehawks Who Know Feck All And Make Shite Up For Drama" and that's really saying something.

There was a time where Im almost sure that his reports were based on Redcafe transfer threads. Several summers in a row he went with things that were only mentioned on the Caf months before his articles.
 
Just a horrific footballer at this level and sort of a prime example of everything wrong with modern football at times. Got a couple of big money moves mainly off the back of running a lot and making a bunch of aggressive challenges, but as a midfielder is actually terrible at progressing play and is petrified of receiving the ball under pressure. He was also quite poor positionally, so it's not like he was ever some sort of rock solid shield of the back 4.

I understand that football is more physical/athletic than ever these days and you need players to cope with that (especially in the PL). But midfielders that don't actually give you any sort of presence on the ball and actually treat it like a bomb will always give me the ick.
 
Just a horrific footballer at this level and sort of a prime example of everything wrong with modern football at times. Got a couple of big money moves mainly off the back of running a lot and making a bunch of aggressive challenges, but as a midfielder is actually terrible at progressing play and is petrified of receiving the ball under pressure. He was also quite poor positionally, so it's not like he was ever some sort of rock solid shield of the back 4.

I understand that football is more physical/athletic than ever these days and you need players to cope with that (especially in the PL). But midfielders that don't actually give you any sort of presence on the ball and actually treat it like a bomb will always give me the ick.
He's not even physical. Gets outmuscled very easily in duels.
 
It sounds like he checked out halfway through this season judging by his recent interview. Carrick obviously doesn't rate him. He will be sold.
Yeah seems so. I’m not a body language expert, but during Carrick’s speech, he looked totally indifferent and appeared (to me anyways) like someone who didn’t want to be out there.