It seems that the penalty shoot-out win over Coventry City has been the last straw for Man United part-owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Given full responsibility for the footballing side of the business, Sir Jim sat at Wembley in disbelief alongside thousands of other Red Devils fans, as the Championship side came back from 3-0 down and only failed to get the win because of the most debatable of VAR calls.
There have been a number of late collapses from United this season with points often squandered in injury-time, but none can have been as galling as that FA Cup semi-final.
Man United to sell up to 12 players
If Erik ten Hag were hoping that the game could be his audition in front of the new regime and the millions watching worldwide, he failed spectacularly – again.
It still isn’t clear if the Dutchman has a future at the club or not, but Sir Jim has evidently seen enough.
According to Mirror Sport, as many as 12 United players will be available for transfer this summer, as the club look to really shake up the squad and get them out of their funk.
Marcus Rashford, Antony, Anthony Martial, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Raphael Varane, Victor Lindelof, Harry Maguire, Casemiro, Christian Eriksen, Sofyan Amrabat and Jadon Sancho are all named as players at risk of being sold.
Given the Financial Fair Play constraints that all clubs have to work under nowadays, the sales of the players named would be expected to bring in a pretty penny.
It’s worth saying too that none of those dozen have improved under ten Hag, and in Rashford’s case he’s evidently gone backwards.
A decent European Championship for him and others may force a rethink, however, if Sir Jim is intent on getting rid, the club may benefit financially from some ‘shop window’ performances that remind everyone why United signed the players in the first place.
How can Antony be in the first team against Sheffield United? The only bench he should be on is the one in the pub screening the game. How many times is ten Hag going to shoot himself in the foot? He is lauded for youth involvement but why has he ignored Amad over Antony AGAIN? His decisions are poor and his coaching regressive. The highlights of the season has seen Mainoo, Garnacho, Kambwala and one or two others come through from the Academy where his coaching has had no attention, these players are shining examples of the Academy, the first team players have gone backwards under his tutelage.
All 12 must go this summer. We have lots of young players to build a very good team around.
5/6 top players added to the squad, along with young players coming through would be good enough to start rebuild. A new manager is also needed.
United’s biggest problem is that they have not had a settled spine to the squad bedded in at United since Van Gaal arrived. The result has been there was never really anyone to bring on the youngsters. Get rid of all those listed and your left with maybe Shaw and Fernandes as the only senior pros. Its nowhere near enough to bring on the sort of numbers of youngsters and new recruits you are talking about . Its totally the wrong squad dynamic. Even when Fergie brought in the fledglings there was a strong spine of senior pros in the dressing room. There would be virtually none after that sort of purge.
Then add to that a new manager, coaching staff (more important in my mind) and a new regime above it (already happening)? Its just too much. You could ruin the club completely and send them down.
There is no other club like United in the EPL and very few in the whole of Europe. Perhaps only Real Madrid suffer equivalent pressure to United when they are not performing to expectations. Trying to fix everything at once could easily cause an even bigger mess.
Yes Ratcliffe needs to move at a pace but he can’t do it all in one summer and as he said on Sunday people will need to be patient
Utter madness or absurd clickbait? You cannot replace 12 top class players like that with better in one summer. He’ll never get the money back on the discards or even close to it and he’ll never be able to find that number of replacements even if United had £500 – £750 million in their budget to replace them and FFP would never allow it anyway.
He’ll get them relegated trying stunts like that when he should be looking at replacing the manager with someone who can actually work with the players.
Ten Hag is clearly the worst manager United have had in the last 50 years relatively speaking. He is the one they need to get rid of. Then replace those players out of contract (and on loan (there (maybe 5 or 6 altogether) and buy top quality replacements for them. That will cost him £250 million or so. Even then he would be pushing it especially from an FFP sense.
If they brought in the right players and the right manager you could well find that the rest squad would improve significantly.
As for Rashford he’s got 4 years left on his contract and is on £300-350k a week and after the season he’s had not even PSG will meet United’s valuation of him let alone pay him that sort of money. The same goes for Sancho in both cases there is a decent player in there if United can find a manager good enough to get them playing consistently. Equally Maguire has earned his reprieve tenfold this season and is in the running for player of the year. McTominay is not far behind. Wan Bissaka has done his shift this season too on the wrong side because both Shaw and Malacia have been out. He does not deserve to be sold because he’s not been played in his proper position.
United have got to stop bouncing from one extreme to another and stabilise their squad. United tried gutting the squad under Van Gaal (38 players in two seasons) and subsequently they suffered one of their worst EPL seasons ever, failed to qualify for UCL and Van Gaal was sacked. Arguably they haven’t been the same since only scoring 70 goals in a league season once subsequently.
Gutting the squad will only make them another Chelsea. Trying to do it as Ten Hag did last summer and failing only leaves players thinking about their careers and not playing for the badge. It’s one of the dumbest things a football club can do.
They need to make strategic improvements and with maybe 6 players to replace (Amrabat, Evans, Varane, Casemiro, Martial, Eriksen,) they can do that in a sensible manner. Try anything more and they will be asking for trouble especially with a new manager in tow.
Given the strategic way Ratcliffe has so far approached the United rebuild I cannot imagine the likes of Berrada, Ashworth and WIlcox telling him to gut the squad. More likely they will try to use their most costly assets whilst moving on those who have already reached the end of their time at the club (as I suggest above).
Removing those 6 will reduce the salary gross by around £1 million a week and create spaces in all parts of the team. That’s more than enough for the new recruitment team to handle in their first summer. Try to do more and mess it up and the Ineos regime will be viewed with the same disdain as that that existed before.
People forget it is critical for Ratcliffe to make a strong statement in his first window as well. Get it wrong and the tainted image it will create could stay with them for a very long time and undermine their project completely. They got it wrong at OGC Nice to start with and that has made it harder for them in France.
Probably sacrilegious to some Reds but the club was already regressingb at the end of Fergies reign . Since then bad decision after bad decision have sucked the life out of the club . There are United rejects in the PL playing better than the players brought in to replace them .
The returns of Pogba and CR7 were a complete disaster and made the dressing room a toxic place from which the club still struggles with .
Good luck Sir Jim , I suspect you’ll need it !