Manchester United January Transfer Budget
Manchester United are definitely going to be active in the transfer market this January (and if Larsson’s capture is anything to go by it may well be another secret raid), so let’s look at our transfer budget and what our transfer policy is most likely going to be.
UnitedRant has gone nuts over over lack of spending in the summer and with Larsson’s loan deal he blew his top again. There are two sides here. Either Manchester United simply don’t have the money and Ferguson is being forced to deal with loans and bargain buys, or under the Glazers Manchester United have wizened up and are only going after players that are guaranteed to deliver a good return on their investment.
It could be this type of thinking that led United to drop their pursuit of Senna and not offer Vieira too much money in the summer. Bringing Larsson in on loan instead of moving for Torres serves the same purpose - United don’t need to spend millions right now when they have Solskjaer, Smith and Rossi to count on.
I’m firmly in the second camp - that Manchester United are buying smart - and because of that I’m sure that Manchester United have the financial resources to trump any team apart from Chelsea, Inter or Real when it comes to buying power. Considering that Chelsea could move for Torres, that could mean trouble.
Do Manchester United have the funds to spend 15 mil on Hargreaves? Yes. 25 mil on Torres? Maybe, but not in January.
We do have the money though - it’s a question of finding the right player (at the right time) to spend on.
- Ferguson Says: Manchester United “Close” to Carrick Deal
- Manchester United Need Rossi To Replace Ruud
- January 2 - Transfers so far
- All Premier League Transfers in January 2008
- Nistelrooy Moves Today From Manchester United To Real Madrid For 10-12 mil
Discussion - 22 Responses
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Well we haven’t spent any of this summers budget (income from sales of players was greater than the cost of player purchases). We started with a budget promised to be enough to buy 2 world class players (£25 million ?) and we we later promised a further £10 million due to the AIG deal - we should have over £30 million in the kitty if needed. Contrary to popular opinion we will be flush with strikers come January … Rooney, Saha, Larsson, Ole, Rossi, Dong and Smith being the main strikers but Ronaldo should be considered stiking cover too. If we are looking for squad strengthening in January then after Hargreaves we should consider a winger and cover for Gary at rightback.
I think that the reasoning behind Larsson is the same reasoning behind Blanc at the time. Only the end-result will determine whether it was a master-stroke or not. I think that apart from cover for the strikers, his main aim is to provide experience /coaching to the ‘young’ strikers (remember that Dongh is also expected to join up in Jan). I still believe that the focus with this whole Larsson move is on Rossi and we will get the answer in Jan by whether he gets loaned out or not. Needless to say, I support the Larsson deal and actually hope that we do NOT get any other strikers (other than Tevez of course).
In midfield, perhaps SAF should give Heinze a shot. UnitedRant actually made a very interesting point in one of his articles (”His Last Swansong”) where he stated that SAF might have a point to prove to Mourinho. Remember Mourinho belittled SAF when he declared that he beat SAF on a “budget” team that was worth less than a 3rd of SAF’s team after Porto eliminated United from CL 2-3 seasons ago. If this be the case, I support not getting any “world-class” players in Jan.
I personally was majorly dissapointed by United’s summer signings and I hope I won’t feel that way again. Therefore, I will be trying to NOT get my hopes up for anyone and rather believe that we can do it with our current team. Regardless, SAF wants this more than anyone and will know EXACTLY who to get to add to the quality of the team. Speculating on the transfers will just raise false hopes again…
Come to hink of it, I think Mourinho’s claims was that his team cost less than 1/10th of United’s team at the time.
If Hargreaves are to be signed in Jan to help United secure the EPL this season, how wise a decision will that be considering he was out for the entire season with a broken leg?
Karl, there is no compulsion to use Hargreaves if we sign him. As he is recovering from injury we may have to wait till he is fully recovered, then slowely integrate him into the side. If that means he ends up not playing regular football until the end of the season then at least he will be fully integrated before next season starts.
Bottom line is he seems the most suitable player to fill our main weakness. His arrival may be at the expense of one or two of our squad players, but if someone like Brown has to exit to make room for Hargreaves then we can expect a rightback to join as well. Personally I would expect Silvestre to leave this January but I have been surprised how long we have held on to him already (so it who knows how much longer we will keep him ?).
I aggree that we need to bolster our midfield and get a cover for Neville. I think our former transfer target, Cicinho is good enough to provide cover for both Gary and as a winger, should Ronaldo be needed up front. Cicinho should come cheap as well, 3-4 million from Real Madrid, as he is not really wanted by Capello. I think Hargreaves won’t be coming in January. Bayern will wait until next summer to offload, and then he wil be ours.
I think everyone is under the allusion that we need strikers because we sold ruud and havnt bought a replacement. Ordinarily i’d say your right but this season we have ole back from injury, rossi and dong more mature from loans and smith from midfield. So eitherway you look at Larrson is a good buy, he is a known impact player and has bundles on expereince that will rub off on the young striking dept. And for lack of signings, there is no need to go out and buuy 5 players every transfer window like rafa. We need maximum 3 more signings, a left winger, a holding mid and a strikers. But we dont need to do it all in one go. The squad has good adaptibility and there is no need to spend millions on oper-hyped players simply because some other clubs have an bottomless pit of funds. I doubted fergies transfer policy with djemba djemba, bellion and kleberson but with evra vidic and kuszack he shows he still knows what hes doing. So unlike unitedrant, lets try not to act like impatient children and have some faith
Enlightent me pls Karl,who you mean by Dongh thanks a lot
He may be suitable, want to come, and clearly be good enough, but Bayern still don’t want to let him go. What prohibits him from buying out his contract with the money United would offer him? Other than being a nice guy?
This talk of spending money is a bit premature don’t you think. The glazers promised a net spend of 100 million over the first four years.
So far United have signed Van der sar, park, vidic, evra, carrick, foster for 34 million with a possible extra 4 million for carrick. Kuzczak is also going to be signed for 4 million next year under some really bizarre arrangement.
so far they’ve sold phil neville, kleberson, van nistelrooy, mikel, jones and spector for 30 million, which means that over the course of their two year united have spent only 4 million.
this season united have been net sellers to the tune of 9.5 million. Now it is possible that they may spend that money on owen hargreaves, then again it is possible that a million monkeys are going to fly out of my backside and produce the works of shakespeare.
Bayern munich just aren’t going to sell owen hargreaves to man utd this season. They never were, this much was blindingly obvious. Trying to sign him in the transfer window was a ridiculous charade to give the impression of transfer activity. We may as well have tried to sign ronaldinho for a fiver.
Then again none of this would matter if michael carrick wasn’t a less exotic, slower, weaker juan veron.
lets face it, none of us know what Fergies transfer agenda is. i was bitterly disappointed with our lack of activity over the summer and i couldnt see how we could mount a genuine challenge for the title with only one new addition in Carrick. i am happily eating my humble pie. however, we do need to strengthen our squad, particularly our midfield, to sustain our push for the title.wether we do or not is a totally different question. Larsson was a shrewd move but he is only a part time solution. no matter what Hargreaves says, it looks like bayern will not budge from their stance and it seems to me to be an easy way out to try and sign a player you no you have no chance of getting. are we going to be victims of our own success?if we are top now with the squad we have will the hierachy feel they can carry us to the end of the season in pole position. forgive my cynicism but i wouldnt be surprised if we dont sign anyone. i have heard numerous promises which havent been fulfilled and i dont want to sucked in to the media frenzy again in november, only to be bitterly disappointed yet again.
Dongh is mis-spelled. It is actually Dong Fangzhou. A young Chinese player who has been out on loan (Royal Antwerp I think) for the last 2 seasons until he qualifies there for a European passport. If memory serves me he is around 21 years old and a tall dynamic striker. He qualifies for his passport in January and could therefore be joining up with the Man U squad then if SAF wishes.
Incidentally, I’ve mentioned this before against another article but rumour has it that January will see Tim Howard make a permanent move to Everton along with £8m in exchange for Tim Cahill. Another part of the rumour has Alan Smith going there on loan until the end of the season.
No use speculating over ManUs pockets. Get to the bottom line and things will be clear. BTW Glazers takeover will prevent ManU fans to have a disclosure of financial management. From the last available figures:
Whats ManUs earning before interest and taxation (EBIT)?
Dropped some 20%… remainded around 50m pounds. But it’ll get better, last year ManU lost a lotta money due to failure in Europe. Given the good performance, Old Trafford capacity extension, lets say ManU bags a hefty 70m pounds this year in EBIT. (BTW ManU can’t count much on its international fan-base. Of the 159m revenues last year, only 9m were from outside UK)
So lets say ManU has 70m to pay for transfers, debt repayments of Glazer debt mountain, taxes AND Glazer’s own return on equity.
INTEREST/PRINCIPAL REPAYMENT: MANDATORY
TAXES: MANDATORY
GLAZER FAMILY TAKING MONEY BACK TO UNCLE SAM: OBVIOUSLY
TRANSFER BUDGET: BOTTOM ON THE LIST
ManU is a rich club and it will make its way through the repayment phase. But during that time, don’t expect your club to have the spending power of the 90s. Always, always remember one thing, which you may agree with or disagree with - Glazer’s takeover of ManU is a classic LBO deal that private equity houses do. There’s ONLY one fucking purpose of these deals to make money for themselves. They don’t give a fuck to football.
Azar, you talk as if United never paid out money to it’s owners yet as a PLC the majority of the profits went to the shareholders. Back then our income streams were smaller not only due to a smaller ground capacity, but also due to the lower income generated by sponsorships (the glazers have brought in larger deals such as the AIG deal).
There are undoubtedly negatives associated with the Glazer takeover but so far we have been fortunate that things are no way as bleak as people such as yourself painted at the start (many said Fergie would be the first to be ejected when Glazer took over).
Transfer dealing are part of the running of the business and ensure future incomes - they are not a luxury any more than spending on the gournds and players were when Glazer took on his previous sports club.
Thanks Martino for remindin me of the chinese striker…
Few thing comes to my mind about our current squad…everyones clamouring for a new class striker simply;Rossi & Dong FangZhong are still too inexperienced,Solsjaer & Larsson are probably just around as subs to turn the game around,not for long anyway…which leaves Smith,whos been out for as long as i can remember,as our only “real” back-up striker…
For our midfield,a convincing holding mid is probably the only thing we need as of currently theres Carrick plus O’Shea sometimes…for width,we’ll be fine so long Giggsy and Ronaldo stays good…and we do have some decent back ups like Park,Richards & Fletcher too….
Our defence is probably the best with few top player in the startin line-up…even the reserve can do a good job filling in across our defensive line…
So i came to the assumption,Man U are capable of sustaining the campaign,provided the first team stays injury free which has been the case this year…But have to admit though,any injury to those eleven would seriously lower the overall quality of our squad which would would in turn could leave our title championship in the balance…
Having said that,long term,we could do with replacements for Giggs & Neville..Scholesy too
So all i’d say whats done is done (Glazer),for now enjoy the ride & hope for the best yeah…
Phobos, dude dividend payout is nothing close to debt servicing!! Your club is currently PLEDGED to JP Morgan and others who have pooled in more than 600 million pounds to help Glazers take over your club! You love ManU and I understand you’d like to view things differently but my friend while ManU could have controlled dividend payouts in years of bad income, it is now legally bound to service debt even if it has to sell its players - whatever it takes! Also, I should clarify that I never painted a “bleak” picture, I only pointed out, “don’t expect your club to have the spending power of the 90s” - You should read up more about the syndicated financing that Glazers got then you’ll acknowledge the debt burden ManU is carrying right now.
Martino
The PLC was taking out 15-20 million a season max. The repayments on the loans to buy man utd are more in the region of 60-85 million depending on how quickly they can pay off the ruinously expensive loans from the hedge funds.
also phobos, man utd are net sellers this season to the tune of nearly 10 million, yet they are on top of the league. This would seem to indicate that there is little or no connection between the glazers activities and the current league position. the squad has been stripped right down, and there is little or no margin of error when it comes to injuries.
Fortunately this season united have been very lucky with injuries so far. Last season heinze, neville, keane and giggs were all injured and we went out of the CL. The season before van nistelrooy, saha and smith were all injured together for three months derailing that season.
This season only park and solksjaer have been injured, and even then not for very long. if Vidic, scholes, saha or rooney were to get injured, united would be really screwed.
dong fanzhou is a moderately talented striker who hasn’t been setting the belgian second division alight. he didn’t score as many goals as sylvan ebanks blake, when they were both at antwerp, and now ebanks blake is now at plymouth.
also there is the issue of his passport. The chinese government doesn’t really allow dual citizenship so if he takes belgian citizenship he will have to give up his chinese citizenship. and I doubt that he will be that happy about it.
Greener, I will have to dig around to check out all of those claims, but a few glaring errors can be corrected straight away. Firstly you claim that if either Rooney or Scholes pick up an injury we are in deep trouble - well it’s already happened and we are top of the league (both were out suspended at the start of the season, and the lack of games even affected Rooney’s form). You claimed only Park and Ole were injured - not true, Heinze has only just come back from injury, Smith too. But we have had injuries to Saha and others (for a while we had about 7 players out). Nothing compared to the last two seasons, but nothing like what you claimed either.
You demean Dongs talent yet ignore the fact that during our pre-season matches he proved himself as much as any player on the pitch. He has had his hatricks etc in Belgium, and this year was nominated for young player of the year (the award Rooney eventually won);
1. Javier Alejandro Mascherano (Sport Club Corinthians/ Argentina)
2. Wayne Rooney (Manchester United/ England)
3. Arjen Robben (Chelsea/ Holland)
4. Bastian Schweinsteiger (FC Bayern Munchen/ Germany)
5. Robinho (Real Madrid/ Brazil)
6. Dong Fangzhou (Royal Antwerp FC/Manchester United/ China)
7. Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United/ Portugal)
8. Francesc Fabregas (Arsenal/ Spain)
9. Rio Antonio Mavuba (Bordeaux/ France)
10. Giorgio Chiellini (Fiorentina/ Italy)
11. Obafemi Martins (Inter/ Nigeria)
12. Freddy Adu (D.C. United/ USA)
As for the claim that he has not been given permission to join us I suggest you read this … http://home.skysports.com/list.aspx?hlid=435651&CPID=8&clid=1&lid=&title=Dong+cleared+for+United+duty
With Rossi as well we have two gifted understudies. Rossi scored around 35 goals last season and he aquitted himself well when he played in our first team.
1. Javier Alejandro Mascherano (Sport Club Corinthians/ Argentina) Look at em now
2. Wayne Rooney (Manchester United/ England)
3. Arjen Robben (Chelsea/ Holland)
4. Bastian Schweinsteiger (FC Bayern Munchen/ Germany)
5. Robinho (Real Madrid/ Brazil)
6. Dong Fangzhou (Royal Antwerp FC/Manchester United/ China)
Yeah so so
7. Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United/ Portugal)
8. Francesc Fabregas (Arsenal/ Spain)
9. Rio Antonio Mavuba (Bordeaux/ France)
10. Giorgio Chiellini (Fiorentina/ Italy) Juventus sold him cause he crap
11. Obafemi Martins (Inter/ Nigeria) Newcastle is still waiting for dividend
12. Freddy Adu (D.C. United/ USA) Never heard of his exploits
Dude look all i’m saying here is they might get nominated for playing well,but if were to come to the premiership,they sucked and i can’t see Dong bein any different
i believe man utd should not buy any player in the january transfer window.
Goalkeeper: See if Foster, Kushack and Howard come good or sell any of them and Bring in BUFFON for summer.
Defenders: Don’t require Reinforcements for defence at moment, but do need do need cover for neville, Bring in BALE left back (loan back out agin) in summer. Sell Brown, Silvestre, Bardsley and O’Shea, as we have good young players coming through as Pique, Evans and Simpson.
Midfielders: Bring in Hargreaves during summer as he regains fitness, Require a World class winger Messi(as if), Nani or a Central playmaker like Ribery, Kaka(as if) in
Strikers: Bring in Torres or Villa during summer. But at moment have plenty of strikers.
we seem like as we are going to become a selling club at the moment, I believe we sell players and get about £15m minimum so we should have a massive war chest as we haven’t been going into our £25m budget per season. So should have about £75m after selling players we don’t need?? As if they are going to spend that much in summer.
I would buy Buffon, sell Kushack and Howard and loan Foster out for another season.
Buy for Defence Alves (Right Back), Bale(loan out), back in squad Pique so get rid of Bardsley, Silvestre and O’Shea.
Buy Midfielders Hargreaves £15m,Nani £10m and Ribery £15m get rid of Fletcher £4m, old (old legends) players Giggs and Scholes thats why alot of reinforments for midfield.
Buy Torres £25m and get rid of Dong and (old legend) Solskjaer.
Starting Line up for next season????
Buffon
Alves,Vidic,Ferdinand,Heinz
Ronaldo,Hargreaves,Ribery,Nani
Rooney,Torres
Van Der Sar
Neville,Brown,Pique,Evra
Park,Carrick,Scholes,Giggs
Saha,Smith
extra’s
Rossi,
we have
AS IF DREAM WORLD!!!!!
Best players to buy in world MESSI,CASILLAS,LAHM,TORRES,KAKA,BUFFON,ALVES,ALONSO, FABREGAS,ETC
CAN GO ON FOREVER!!!