So what's next for us, now that the initial shock is over.
We have three major problems:
1. Cost: our wage bill is too high, making our revenues / expenses gap tiny and making it impossible to sign new players we need due to Financial Fair Play restrictions
2. Revenue: there's only that much you can reduce cost. We need to also start making more money
3. Aging/aged infrastructure, both Old trafford and training ground are in bad conditions and inadequate.
Here are my probably controversial thoughts on what we need to do to address these challenges.
Hard Choices
We cannot pretend that these problems do not exist and we are going to start suddenly signing Mbappe or win EPL in the next several years. That ship has sailed with rejecting a billionaire Qatari owner, and it's not clear if even he would have been able to avoid most of the Financial Fair Play restrictions.
Some people say we need to be like Brighton. I would model our behavior more after Newcastle. Even though they did get bought by billionaire owners, due to FFP they didn't immediately start spending a lot. In both Brighton and Newcastle cases, they were looking for unknown, cheaper talent that they believed could grow into greatness, not - ready-made galacticos for high price. The big difference is - once somebody becomes great at Brighton they usually have to sell them. In case of Newcastle, and hopefully United, we can keep great players we have discovered and that should be our strategy.
So with that:
1. Cost: as painful as it is, we should let go everybody whose wage bill is over 200K/week. We simply cannot afford them. And yes, it includes Rashford, Casemiro, Varane. This will be most controversial and many won't like it, possibly including Ten Hag, but we have really no choice if we want to rebuild and ever be great again. Existing wage bill is killing us
Instead we need to make very smart signings of lesser-known players that will play for us for 100-150K/week at most. Or whatever is comparable with how much City and Liverpool are paying on average. Initially - we should pay less.
2. Revenue: clearly we need to sell a lot of players we have today. That's a given. But it won't be enough. We need to also develop new sources of income, be it revised TV deals, digital initiatives or whatever. Somebody needs to become very creative here.
3. Old Trafford and training ground. We need to raise money for these and the only way it can happen is bringing outside investors who will fund renovations without loans to United. For instance, somebody renovates Old Trafford and turns part of its ground into a mega shopping mall
Something radical like that. Won't be pleasant, but it's better than a leaking Old Trafford.
