With 10 Premier League games remaining Sir Jim Ratcliffe has instructed Erig Ten Hag to offload six first team players in the Summer
With 10 Premier League games left, Manchester United can’t change their fate and will not be in the top four.
United beat Everton 2-0 on Saturday to get back to winning ways, but they are still behind three other teams in the race for the last top four spot. Tottenham Hotspur beat Aston Villa 4-0, cutting the gap to eight points from eleven. However, United are still behind and need to catch up.
To keep Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s plan to rebuild the club on track, securing Champions League entry for the following season will be very important. Being a part of Europe’s top club competition will bring United a lot of money and make them more appealing to potential move partners.
That means that each of the 10 tasks United still has to face will be very important. Ten Hag said that all of his team’s last 11 games were like cup finals before the win over Everton, and that probably hasn’t changed.
But things are about to change in M16, no matter what place United finishes in this season. United are looking to make more moves in a seller’s market, as reported by the Manchester Evening News last month. They want to make a record number of sales during the summer window.
A lot of players who aren’t in Ten Hag’s first-choice starting XI need to be let go, along with one or two who could help balance the books in the fight against Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. Those expected exits will, of course, leave holes that will need to be filled.
Everyone already knows that United needs to make some changes to their team this summer, both to add backup and make Ten Hag’s starting eleven stronger. United made a list of places they want to improve as early as September, but it’s possible that other positions have been added since then.
United planned to get better at right back, centre back, central midfield, and attack on that first list. At this point in the season, it’s not impossible to think that they are also looking for a new left back, since they have had so many illness reports from that side of the defence.
In the past few months, Diogo Dalot has become the best right back, but United’s interest in Bayer Leverkusen’s Jeremie Frimpong shows that they still want to improve that position. When you look at the defensive line as a whole, only Lisandro Martinez is sure to start in Ten Hag’s best lineup. This means that the left-sided centre back spot is empty.
As he got ready for the recent match, Lisandro Martinez wore a United tracksuit to the Etihad Stadium.
A lot of the time this season, Manchester United has really missed Lisandro Martinez. The picture is by James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images.
United has had a lot of different center-back combinations this season, and they haven’t decided what will happen with Raphael Varane yet. Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof could both be sold, even though they have gotten better.
We need to find a long-term replacement for Casemiro so that United can move him to middle. Kobbie Mainoo has become a mainstay, which means he will be hard to get rid of. On the other hand, Bruno Fernandes is still in the running to stay chief planner in the No.10 spot.
Some people have said that Mainoo could replace Casemiro, which would allow Mason Mount to come back and try to fully spark his United career after an injury-filled first season at the club. Mainoo, on the other hand, is changing into a more forward-thinking and creative midfielder. He could become a strong No. 8.
Rasmus Hojlund was brought in from Atalanta last August with the goal of becoming Manchester United’s long-term striker. This means the club probably won’t go after a big-name No. 9 in the summer. As for the wide places, there are no guarantees at this point.
The right side is still a problem, as neither Jadon Sancho, who was signed in 2021, nor Antony, who was drafted the next year, have made the case for taking up that position. Even though Alejandro Garnacho is the most obvious choice, he is not sure to start every week at the age of 19. This is especially true since there isn’t a clear favourite to start on the left side because Marcus Rashford hasn’t been playing well this season and has been linked with Paris Saint-Germain several times.
In the same way that Martinez, Mainoo, Fernandes, and Hojlund all look like they will be in the starting lineup, Andre Onana does too. Concerning the rest, there is no certainty.
