Manchester United will listen to serious offers for all their first-team players this month, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe poised to make radical changes to overhaul their underperforming squad.
Ratcliffe has been open about his views on United's wasteful recruitment in recent years and believes they must make sacrifices. United are thirteenth in the Premier League and have gone four games without a win under Ruben Amorim.
Amorim has already been told he will be working with a limited transfer budget after the club spent £600 million on players for his predecessor Erik ten Hag. It means he has no chance of landing his top transfer target Viktor Gyokeres in the January window, with the Swede carrying an £80million release clause.
To make matters worse, Amorim could be on the verge of losing some of its key players, with the club ready to consider offers for a number of key players. The Guardian reports that young stars Kobbie Mainoo, Alejandro Garnacho and Rasmus Hojlund are now expendable, despite being considered untouchable under Ten Hag. The publication also claims that the club would be open to 'serious offers' for all Amorim players.
Mainoo and Garnacho are considered homegrown players, having come through the United Academy, and that would be particularly valuable sales in the age of profit and sustainability rules. Mainoo is restless as he has become frustrated by the lack of movement on a new contract, which was first proposed in May.
The 19-year-old is paid just £20,000 a week at his boyhood club and knows he could earn much more elsewhere. Chelsea are among the clubs monitoring the situation as they know they can take advantage of United's dire situation.
INEOS will not be ring-fencing any assets this month, meaning summer signings Leny Yoro, Noussair Mazraoui, Matthijs de Ligt, Manuel Ugarte and Joshua Zirkzee could be released after just six months at the club. Ideally, it would be overpaid and underperforming players like Marcus Rashford, Casemiro and Antony who move, but buyers for such players are not easy to find.
The PSR rules are a real concern for United, who have made a pre-tax loss of £312.9 million over the past three seasons. A recent report shows that United have racked up a staggering net spend of €1.3 billion since 2015, more than any other club in the world. Ratcliffe has been busy making unpopular cuts across the board since taking over, making 250 people redundant, while sacking Sir Alex Ferguson as club ambassador.
Last month, the petrochemical billionaire told fanzine United We Stand: “Manchester United has become mediocre. It's supposed to be one of the best football clubs in the world. We have to make some tough and unpopular decisions. If you shy away from the tough decisions , then not much will change.”
He added: “I know we get criticized in the press, but we have to question the cost of running this club because what I want us to be able to do is buy really good footballers, and not so many of spend the money on infrastructure. We cannot run a business at a loss, as United has done in recent years.”
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