Manchester United’s transfer strategy would not impress Jose Mourinho, given previous comments by the former Old Trafford boss. It’s glaringly obvious that Ruben Amorim’s squad requires a significant revamp after a dismal season, which reached one last low with defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in the Europa League final.
United have already secured Matheus Cunha from Wolves, while negotiations are underway with Brentford for the acquisition of Bryan Mbeumo. Despite a brutal round of cost-cutting off the pitch, United could splash out on it, having also been linked with Sporting CP forward Victor Gyokeres and Aston Villa goalkeeper Emi Martinez, among numerous other players. United are aiming to rectify the damage caused by a series of costly blunders in the transfer market, with Amorim seemingly willing to part ways with the likes of Jadon Sancho, Antony, Rasmus Hojlund, Joshua Zirkzee and Andre Onana and replace them with fresh talent.
This approach bears a resemblance to the one adopted by Pep Guardiola at Manchester City during Mourinho’s tenure at United, albeit without as many initial mistakes. Mourinho took a swipe at Guardiola after City splashed out more than £200million on defenders in the summer of 2017 as part of a broader spending spree at the Etihad.
United invested heavily that summer as well, with almost £150m being spent, but Mourinho claimed that they couldn’t compete with City’s supposed ability to keep replacing one expensive player with another. He told United’s website: “You think the club can put here now £600million and let’s buy six players of £100m? The club cannot do that.
“I cannot expect the club to do that, so it’s not critical and you can see how the market is, especially with the top teams. But, you know, without taking any credit away from Manchester City and Pep and his staff and the players, they obviously have lots of credit in what they are doing.
“But Pep arrives, he has the goalkeeper of England (Joe Hart), he doesn’t like him so he buys the goalkeeper of Barcelona (Claudio Bravo), he doesn’t like him so he buys another one (Ederson). Now he likes.
“He has [Pablo] Zabaleta and [Aleksandar] Kolarov – two very good players but more than 30 years old. He wants to replace, he doesn’t replace with two, he replaces with three. One from Tottenham (Kyle Walker), one from Monaco (Benjamin Mendy) and one from Real Madrid (Danilo) as an example.
“Can we buy six or seven players at the same time? Can we invest £600-700m? No. So, it’s difficult. I think the last years, the market is going in such a direction or you belong to one of these clubs where there is no limit and you just buy what you want and there is no limit, there is no financial fair play, there is nothing, you do what you want – or it’s hard.”
Now, clubs are tied by financial constraints, which means costly signings are typically paired with sales. This is certain to be the scenario at United this summer. However, it’s doubtful that Mourinho, whose win ratio was just slightly below Sir Alex Ferguson’s when he was dismissed in December 2018, would endorse United’s current strategy of replacing big-money signings with more big-money signings.