You are not the first one who thinks like that and i don't understand it. Are we Burnley or Everton? Selling club? We need class now. Especially in defence. If 100 mil will get you world class defender in next 5 years then if you are Man Utd( or Real or Barca or Juve...) then you buy that. And except Ronaldo( who forced that transfer), when we sold player at his peak? And why would we even do that? Our goal is to have best players in the world. While player is world class and can be sold for huge money, we must keep him. When he is not good, we should sell him. But then buying clubs are not tier 1 or even tier 2 clubs. So we will not get some big money for player.
I agree with huge wage bill. But it is not because we pay big for class player. It is because average players have big salaries. But this summer we have chance to fix that. Don't renew contracts with 7,8 squad players plus sell some players.
OK, I will bite on this. Fair points, btw.
The narrative of average players having big salaries is not correct IMO. Not anymore. The major part of our wage budget constitutes of players like Pogba, Sanchez, Lukaku and Matic (soon to be joined by De Gea hopefully). Add Fellaini and Lingard who has renewed their contracts recently and you have the major part of our wage budget.
Players like Jones, Rojo, Smalling, Mata, Herrera, Darmian, etc that are usually on relatively small money in todays market. There is a reason that the club is waiting to renew contracts for these players until the last minute. Its because they dont cost much in todays market.
One needs to compare what it would cost to upgrade a Darmian for example in todays market. One can joke and say that he is shite, but he is an Italian international, not that old and not so shite that people wants to make him out to be. We would need to double his wages to upgrade him I would argue.
Just some food for thought....