Now the dust has settled and the club knows they are playing Europa League football, it means that we need to be far more pragmatic in our recruitment. The main question that will drive this summers recruitment will be whether ETH stays or leaves.
My guess and unfairly so is that United have made the decision to sack him. I think all the McKenna stuff is a red herring and the club want either Tuchel or Poch. I also think they want a 4231 possession based formation.
We will have a minimum of 38PL games, 3 Domestic Cup games and 8 Europa League Games which is a minimum of 49 with a potential maximum of 67.
We probably have 60 matches to navigate next season so we need a squad of 28/29 players as all clubs in Europe will due to increasing injuries. Remember we will always have 5/6 injured and we need 22 to 23 players always available, yesterday showed how important a strong bench is?
Players leaving ; A Martial, B Williams,
J Evans, R Varane, T Heaton all out of contract none will be renewed maybe Heaton might be but unlikely. The club will want more than £20m for Mctominay and at least £20m for AWB.
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I really like what you’ve done and we should have a decent budget due to EL qualification that will affect expenditure. I’m hoping that sir Jim gets serious as I don’t believe our budget is now restricted by FFP/FSP/PSR even the 80% squad rule from UEFA should be ok however I genuinely think there are real Cashflow and working capital issues.
Let me explain Sir Jim’s initial $200m(£156m) investment was used to pay off the company credit card. I believe £120m was paid off reducing the debt to £140m down from £260m.
This is debt and we are simply creating a credit line to use for player transfer and agent fees as the club no longer has huge cash reserves to buy players.
That means that there is currently £160m maximum that could be used for facilitating transfers, agent fees and Signing on fees for players signed on a free. To be clear here not every transfer or agent fee is paid in an upfront payment, most are now paid in instalments from 12 months through to 5 years however if you are paying a BUY OUT clause these usually need to be paid in one instalment or at best two very close together.
So let’s start with Michael Olise probably has a £55m buy out, the club would have to pay that in 1 instalment and this summer so that would leave about £100m of available credit before we generate additional cash from player sales.
Players who could be sold and raised cash are the following;
Casemiro, Lindelof, S Mctominay(40m/YP),
A Fernades(YP/S£5m), Sancho(35-45m)
M Greenwood(35m/YP) , DVB (5m), C Eriksen(5m), Hanibal Mejbri (10m/YP)
F Pellistri(10m)
The reason why the club is so keen on the Saudi market is because Saudi clubs normally pay upfront so dreamland for United, this year would be the Saudis saying we will buy Casemiro(40m), Hanibal(Muslim and benefits from the new rule allowing Saudi clubs to buy 2 extra players under 21 and under for maybe £15m) plus Mason Greenwood or Sancho for £45m as the club would directly benefit from another £100m of working cash to be used for transfers, any other payments like a £30m agreed fee for Greenwood from Juventus would probably result in 3 instalments of £10m or potentially 5 instalments of £6m depending on what is affordable and can be agreed!
We desperate need cash, not just reduction in wages but hard cash, SJR sitting all happy he’s come in won an Fa Cup for men and women, under 18 boys won the treble and under 21 girls double, so balance sheet might look ok even without CL football next year.
The million dollar question is if he’s in a real hurry he’ll invest another £150m for another 2.7% well soon see what his true ambitions are with how he deals with ETH in the next few days!
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5340986/2024/03/14/man-united-debt-jim-ratcliffe/#
