The on-off Bryan Mbeumo saga and Liam Delap choosing Chelsea are troubling bellwethers of Manchester United’s predicament a month from the start of the season. So, too, is having half an outfield first team in a bomb squad that skulks in for training in the late afternoon when those not in the same club-decreed quasi-shame have left for the day.
As time ticks towards Arsenal’s opening Premier League Sunday visit and, beyond, to the window’s close on 1 September, Ruben Amorim can hardly be ecstatic at how the summer is progressing. The head coach has added only Matheus Cunha from Wolves, for the forward’s £62.5m release clause, a sizeable chunk of a transfer budget constricted by a looming debt mountain and the need to sell to buy a No 9 and, possibly, finally prise Mbeumo from Brentford.
Here we come to the infamous five: Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho, Antony, Jadon Sancho and Tyrell Malacia are a quintet who, United claim, have informed the executive they want transfers. They have been ordered to train separately, which they are doing – at 5pm. It is hard to escape picturing them sneaking into Carrington as naughty schoolboys when Amorim and his squad have cleared the facility.
United remain in flux – some may even insist chaos. Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s back-of-house operation will have dramatically cut back the 1,100-plus employees he inherited when the latest round of redundancies is over, and the on-field product lost May’s desultory Europa League final 1-0 to Tottenham in Bilbao, finished an all-time Premier League low of 15th with 42 points and a minus 10 goal difference and was, according to Christian Eriksen, lucky not to be relegated.
The Dane, who left this summer, has a case. Although United were 17 points clear of 18th-placed Leicester, an argument can be made that Amorim’s side were a prolonged Bruno Fernandes injury away from a survival dogfight – at least.
Fernandes is one more curio of a Ratcliffe project that has already lost a football director (Dan Ashworth) and a manager (Erik ten Hag). The oddity is that the captain has also not gone through the exit door. Reject £100m for a footballer who will be 31 three matches into the season at a club that lost £300m in the last three years and is £1bn-plus in debt?
Strange is one verdict of the decision from Ratcliffe-Amorim, yet this is how Fernandes characterised the decision not to move to Al-Hilal. In June he said: “I had to wait a while to think about the future. I would be willing to do it if United thought it was best to move on. I spoke with Ruben Amorim, who really tried to talk me out of it. I spoke to the club, who said they weren’t willing to sell me, only if I wanted to leave.”
“If United thought it best to move on” and “Amorim tried to talk me out of it” places the onus on the club not wanting him to depart. There is also a school of thought that despite Fernandes also saying his wife offered no preference either way – leaving the player to decide his future – not uprooting the family was a factor. United might not have cried if Fernandes had swung the other way given the desperately needed windfall that would have swelled the coffers.
Fernandes is United’s best player, by a distance, so Amorim’s wish (backed by Ratcliffe) can be filed as prudent football sense, but United preparing to fly to Stockholm to face Leeds for Saturday’s pre-season opener having signed only Cunha also blares transfer market dysfunction.
This has been an issue since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in May 2013. In ordering Rashford, Garnacho, Sancho, Antony and Malacia to keep fit alone, Ratcliffe, Amorim and Ashworth’s successor, Jason Wilcox, flag that all are personae non gratae whom the club are desperate to offload, markedly reducing their market value.
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When you possibly need to raise a few more million to land Mbeumo, trumpeting to the industry that five assets can be bought for a bargain is hardly a 4D-chess move.
For Mbeumo, Brentford now want a total of nearer £70m, up from the £65m Ratcliffe and company understood last month would have had him joining Cunha in Amorim’s squad. Ratcliffe is determined not to be pushed into paying over the odds so plays the patience game.
But as the clock ticks you wonder how Amorim feels about the effect on preparation for the campaign. United have no European football for the first time since 2014-15, meaning the head coach will have more days to drill his team in his beloved 3-4-3. But, as he constantly says, the right players are needed to fit this.
After Delap, the number-one centre-forward target, plumped for Chelsea – he is now a world champion – Amorim remains hopeful of signing a No 9. But given United’s position in the market you could forgive the Portuguese being unsure whether Ratcliffe-Wilcox can pull off a deal – or seal Mbeumo’s arrival. To further complicate matters, the goalkeeper André Onana will not be able to play on the US pre-season tour, and perhaps for longer, because of a hamstring injury.
Eriksen also said: “Next season it has to be better and I’m sure it will be.” Ratcliffe and his cohort have to show there is a plan B.