Manchester United fans’ concern regarding the club’s lack of transfer activity this summer is understandable. This isn’t usually how they operate.
Michael Carrick’s side have added Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans to bolster the midfield, as well as Karl Darlow as back-up goalkeeper – but that’s it.
Yes, 18-year-old Cristian Orozco has arrived from Colombia as well as a pair of academy signings but on the whole it’s been a fairly out-of-the-ordinary summer for Man United.
Manchester United would not fare well at your local car boot sale
Are the club skint? Is Sir Jim Ratcliffe tightening the purse strings at the very, very top now instead of INEOS’s cost-cutting measures disproportionately affecting the little people?
The answer is more straightforward than all of that: Manchester United have spent big recently and even one of the richest clubs in the world must acknowledge there has to be some belt-tightening when there’s a poor return on investment.
In short, Man United are not broke, nor are they skint – they are an organisation that is simply too large to fail, much like a Real Madrid or a Barcelona. But there comes a time when transfer expenditure deemed poor business does come back to bite.
That is what Man United are experiencing this summer. Last year’s spending on Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo, Benjamin Sesko and Senne Lammens was significant, even if the club did manage to shift Alejandro Garnacho and Antony from their books.
Poor Michael Carrick, eh. We can all put our miniature violins away, actually, because the club have still spent a cool £85 million on Santos and Tielemans.
According to English football finance data from Valuball, Man United’s net spend on player trading since the beginning of the 2022/23 season is £614m. Unsurprisingly, only Chelsea boast a greater figure than that.
Unlike the Blues, though, who have recouped almost £1 billion in player sales during the same period, Man United have been notoriously poor sellers. In five years, the club have made sales worth just £280m, which works out less than Leeds United, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest.
After a while, the inability to shift expensive deadwood, or deadwood at a good price, begins to inhibit incoming transfer business.
From this season onwards, the existing Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) are being replaced by the new Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) framework. This legislation limits a club’s total on-pitch spending, such as transfer amortisation, player wages, and agent fees, to 85 per cent of their overall football-related revenue.
This means the profit a club earns from player sales directly dictates their spending power.
That said, Man United’s revenue dwarves the majority of their Premier League peers, so there is every chance they will make further signings this window and not feel the squeeze as much as another club without gargantuan commercial revenue numbers.
Teams without Man United’s off-field resource simply have to become savvy sellers in order to stay afloat and compete in the Premier League – that is the nature of the beast. Chelsea have become particularly astute at it, which has so far funded their eye-watering spend post-Roman Abramovich.
Manchester is once again a two-team Champions League city this season and that is a financial godsend, but if the powers that be cannot turn profits for players in the long-run, radio silence on the transfer front will soon become a recurring theme each summer at Old Trafford.