Sell/don't extend/loan: Wan Bissaka, Lindelof, Varane, Casemiro, Amrabat, Eriksen, McTominay, van de Beek, Antony, Greenwood, Sancho, Martial.
Love Varane but his contract expires next month and him being injury-prone will decide against keeping him. Casemiro can hopefully be sold to Saudi Arabia. McTominay has been brilliant goals wise this season but we have to attacking midfielders and should not really on him for goals. He's 27, PL proven and we can can decent money for him. Antony I don't see how we manage to sell him so either a loan or keeping him as an option as we may have to. I'd even sell Rashford but with long contract and huge wages no one is taking him.
Buy: backup RB, starting CB, new LB, starting DM, backup CM, starting RW, starting ST.
With Shaw and Malacia being out injured for so long, not sure we can rely on them staying fit next season. Both left and right wing positions seem most complicated to me. Garnacho and Amad aren't guaranteed starters and Rashford has been so poor this season. You'd think we'll sell Greenwood and Sancho so they are most probably thing of the past. Would go for Toney or Solanke at ST
Whether we qualify for Europe or not will be a factor probably as well.
I’d go for Solanke as well but I get the impression this summer is critical, most fans are saying we need 6-7 players minimum!
The reality isn’t so much European qualification as in the current EPL format for PSR 24/25 season just like Chelsea we could have one season out of European Competition and basically spend what we want.
I’ll explain if we qualify for Europe we can only Spend 80% of our revenue for the fiscal year January 24 to December 31st 2024 on Wages, Agent Fees, Transfer payments and Amortised or owed transfer payments(Historic). With No CL football this year and no European football, I’d take a guess that the Gross Revenue reduces to maybe £570-580m, this will be different from Financial year accounts which run from March 31st to April 1st and those will be probably as high as £670m with last years CL 6 matches included.
Eighty percent of £570m is a threshold of £456m, Our current wages and it’s important to remember that half of the year will be fixed in this figure are £324m this includes 1084 employees, Directors, Mens, Youth, Women’s and all staff fees, the men’s part is about £220m of that figure. There are some concessions with female and youth team structure, however it’s way too big and why Sir Jim is trying to force people back to office work, he’s looking for easy resignations, it’s why players like Casemiro, Martial, Varane and Sancho they want to leave. Ineos don’t believe they are getting value for money and they are right!
So the mistake most United fans are making is that if we’ve got no European football we will have less room to spend this is not true. It’s also important noting that removing Martial, Varane, Casemiro, Eriksen, Lindelof, Sancho will not save you £1,250m per week on the wages and instantly bring down the £324m to £260m because we’ve paid their wages already for half of the UEFA accounting period up to June 2024. From next season there is a 20/25% clause in all United players contracts so even Rashford, Mount, Bruno, Maguire, Onana, Martinez would not be receiving their combined £1.2m but instead £62m in wages that would reduce to £47m so there would be a 6 month saving of about £7.5m maybe £12-13m on the whole squad left. It’s fair to assume that even with all the necessary sacking, selling, releasing and restructuring the club would still have a combined wage bill of maybe £285m, add that figure to the £103m that must be paid in historic transfer fees to other football clubs and you then add £30m of Agent fees, there would be very little room to manoeuvre in the transfer market possibly as little as £28m amortised maybe £100m max and that’s a risk, we would absolutely have to sell Academy players like Greenwood and Mctominay to be able to spend £200-250m.
Now if we don’t qualify we are not complied to abide by those rules and the new PSR anchoring rules do not start to 2025/26 season as does the 70/85% FSP rule. That means that United could providing they do not breach the current PSR rule of losing more than £105m over a three year period, spend what they want within reason. United have lost £41m on last years accounts in the last period of this measuring stick however Sir Jim has invested more than £90m allowed which basically means the club is actually allowed to spend potentially 90% of their revenue which was last season at £648m, the EPL uses financial year and this year it will be 90% reducing to 85% next year if you are not in Europe and 70% if you are.
Effectively that means that the threshold this summer without European football would be £583m for a club like United so with £280m Wages, £30m Agent Fees and £103m amortised, that would leave a huge £185m before amortisation, a budget of £300-400m could be spent like Chelsea did without any penalty whatsoever.