The Premier League Panel: Can Manchester United afford to rebuild?

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Why is Ruben Amorim struggling at Manchester United - and how can the club get back on track? Our expert panel tries to work it all out.

Transcript

00:00when you're talking about sort of the idea about they have to decide whether they're doing long-term

00:03planning or short-term planning offensively, whether they're worried about how they view

00:06next season, their ambitions for the next couple of years. Can Manchester United afford, given the

00:11expectations of fans, the amount of pressure put them on by the media, just the expectations given

00:16the scale of the club that are on them pretty much automatically every year, can they afford

00:20to say, right, this is a full-blown rebuild. We're going to be bad for a year or two. We're not going

00:24to put pressure on these youngsters. I mean, is that even possible to have that kind of situation,

00:29given the pressure that's there, kind of as of right, given their history?

00:34I mean, the reality is, is that it's not necessarily a decision that they're going

00:37to have the luxury of making. You know, it's not as if Manchester United can wave a wand and

00:41suddenly be like, right, okay, lads, we're going to suddenly kick back on and go for Champions League

00:45football. They might be bad regardless of if they go and try to look to full rebuild or not. And so

00:50I guess in that situation, there is probably a version of it where they look at it and they go,

00:54right, what's the harm in maybe taking a year or two and trying to bring through a few players who

01:00can, you know, further down the line, hopefully become a squad and a side that are really capable

01:07of challenging again. But it's just chaos. It's utter chaos. And I don't think that anybody really

01:14knows what they're doing. I think that, you know, Ratcliffe might have come into United with these

01:20ideals that he wanted to go about a certain way. And then the sort of reality of the situation is

01:24maybe forces hand in a different way. And suddenly you end up with a splintered vision of what United

01:28are trying to do. And especially in a recruitment sense, who they're trying to bring in. So

01:33I really don't know. I don't know what the solution is. And I know that's not a great

01:36thing to be saying on a podcast, which is opinion pick. But I just don't know,

01:40because I don't think anybody does with United right now. And it's quite painful to watch,

01:45if I'm being honest with you. Rich, I suppose one of the questions as well,

01:49whether they do a full rebuild or make it more gradual, is how they're going to pay for it.

01:53There's been a lot of reporting recently from The Athletic and others, which suggests that United

01:57are concerned about their capacity to stay within the Premier League's profit and sustainability

02:01rules. How worried should fans be about the club's financial situation? I think if you work for me,

02:06I should be very concerned because there'll be more redundancies coming up for one. United have

02:11always said, look, their financial situation is tight. Again, the elephant in the room is

02:16we don't know what they're going to be faced with next season, the summer, because they could

02:20qualify for the Champions League. That is still a possibility. If they do that, those finances

02:24are eased somewhat. But if they fail to do so, it will just snowball again. And the issues really

02:30do continue to grow there. In terms of getting rid of players, an academy sale would really

02:37boost United because that counts as pure profit. Rashford's still the one that he would engineer,

02:44pull those levers to give you a lot more possibility. And the quirk is, even if United

02:50do sell some of these academy players, they would sell Garnaccio and Rashford, they would open up

02:54the possibility of being able to spend quite a bit in terms of PSR. But the fundamental issue is they

03:00don't actually have that money. So even if they get to the position where they unlock the ability

03:06to spend lots of money, they don't actually have that money in the first place to spend. So

03:10it's a real complex one. It's really, really tight, the way that they're operating at the

03:15moment. As we said, player sales are fundamental to that. There's also the stadium. I know they're

03:21trying to go for all these avenues, try and get some sort of government funding in terms of the

03:25rejuvenation of the actual area outside the ground, but United will fundamentally have to pay

03:30for that stadium, the bulk of it themselves, whatever happens. And we saw what happened at

03:34Tottenham when that happened. Tottenham basically said, look, we're going to build the best stadium

03:38in the world, certainly in the Premier League, but we're not going to buy players. And that was

03:43kind of the trade-off Tottenham had for a few years. And there was that summer where Tottenham

03:47didn't buy anyone. The problem for United is, if United said, look, we're going to build this new

03:52massive stadium, but you're not having any players this summer, there would be full-blown outrage.

03:57It all stems back to the issues with the Glazers and that leverage takeover United in the first

04:03place, the way the debt's been handled and mismanaged, the way that the club has just

04:07been run in the background for not only 10 years, before Ferguson retired, United being a mess,

04:14you know, behind the scenes. It's kind of been masked by the success on the pitch by Ferguson,

04:19his genius. And yeah, it all stems down to the parasitic owners at the very top. And now that

04:25they've got Ratcliffe in charge, they've been able to make more uncomfortable decisions. You know,

04:30Ratcliffe's basically made the decisions that the Glazers wanted to make, but couldn't make

04:34themselves. So it's just a really weird situation at the club right now. You can't really envisage

04:42things having a quick fix. You know, as Jason said, you know, I don't have the luxury of long-term

04:48planning. Whether they like it or not, every single decision has to bring short-term gain

04:53because United are too big a club to ever say, we'll be good in five, 10 years. That's just not

04:58good enough. They've got this project to try and win the league by the 150th anniversary.

05:03That seems fanciful at best. And yeah, the issues just keep on growing every single week at this

05:09football club.

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