Only 6 times Man United sold players with the price exceeding 30 million euros. This is a stunned achievement because they made people ask: Should MU players so poor quality, or MU too young in selling players?
MU's problems in the past decade are endless, but the poor in their transfer activities is extremely clear. After dominating English football under Sir Alex Ferguson, MU has been unable to win the Premier League since the coach retired in 2013.
The reckless spending for the players without a clear and reasonable strategy is an important factor leading to their collapse. Time after time, MU bought a player with an ancient cutting price, paying them a lot of salary and making these people from the books almost impossible.
Since Sir Alex retired, only Chelsea (2.87 billion euros) and Man City (2.31 billion euros) spent more than MU (2.14 billion euros), but the Red Devils had the highest net spending in the world, 1.54 billion euros. After the 2024/25 disaster season, coach Ruben Amorim will continue to reform the squad, but the transfer budget depends on selling players.
But the results of MU players are very bad. Since Ineos acquired the control of sports segment with 27.7% of MU's stake in February 2024, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has repeatedly emphasized the importance of improving the transfer strategy.
Despite the natural focus on new players, MU must also target the development of players in the club, and sell them to make a profit. As the graphics below, MU only ranked 9th in the transfer income in the last 10 seasons, compared to books with clubs in the Premier League.
MU has recovered 545 million euros from selling players, but this figure is significantly lower than their formidable opponents, Man City (922 million euros) and Liverpool (690 million euros) – not to mention Chelsea with 1.44 billion euros. It is embarrassing.
MU had to be very hard to sell unwanted players recently, and often had to accept loan contracts, even have to pay or partially pay for that player because the partner is unable to pay.
MU also only ranked 32nd in the world in terms of transfer income in the previous 10 seasons, far less than other European clubs. The fact that Cristiano Ronaldo moved to Real Madrid for 94 million euros in 2009 was still a record for MU, and David Beckham's movement to Madrid in 2003 was still the fourth value deal.
MU only sells 6 players with a fee that exceeds 30 million euros and this is a field where United must improve significantly in the effort to return to glory before. The importance of creating revenue through buying and selling players has increased significantly in recent seasons, due to the stricter financial regulations.
The mobilization of capital through the sale, especially from the academy graduates, allows more likely to mobilize related to PSR. MU has been restricted by financial regulations in recent transfer, but they have signed a contract with Maheus Cuha for 74 million euros this summer and paid about 70 million euros for Bryan Mbeumo.
But it is understood that any other agreement will depend on selling unwanted stars like Marcus Rashford, Antony and Jadon Sancho. MU will receive a significant fee from the sale of Scott McTominay and Mason Greenwood in the summer of 2024, but unfortunately that is just rare spots.
