Reasons to keep Mainoo:
- This club is built on building around their academy graduates, he is a star talent
- He has massive potential and has been a United lad for ages, and could easily be a future captain. He has some very rare attributes but yes has to develop other parts... He's 19, no big deal there.
- The club will, based on the past 10 years, likely not spend the money we get wisely
- Him leaving opens up a hole in the squad that we'd need to spend 40m to fill
- We are years away from anything successful. Better to build around our core young group and surround them with better talent to help develop them, so they peak at the same time rather than sell the only players that might get us out of this. Build around Yoro, Mainoo, Amad, Garnacho. Those are the core group who, if we have a successful future, will be the key to it. Selling them for short term improvements is dumb, selling them to buy lesser talents is also just lowering your potential as a team (Dorgu for example is a young and decent talent, but he isn't on par with those 4 as prospects).
Reasons to sell Mainoo:
- Football reasons - Not a natural fit for Amorim's system (who is...)
- Board reasons - Can get good money for him so we can help to fix whatever financial issue we have, if we have one
Basically, if the club doesn't have financial issues, then it's shit to sell him. If there are other ways out of the financial issues, then it'd be better to take those routes. He's exactly the sort of talent you want your club to develop so you can build around them, both to help build your club identity (it is absolutely important to have this), but also because you want star talents. The ONLY situation where he should be sold is if we literally have no other way out of the financial issues and are in genuine trouble, and selling players like him and Garna is the only way. If we do this to accelerate the attempted rebuild by a year, then the owners/people in charge can go feck themselves.
Saying all that, if I was their agent looking out for the good of their own careers... I'd probably be telling them to leave, develop elsewhere, and look to come back 5 years from now on a free in the hope that the club sorted itself out.