We as united fans continue to put ourselves through this every year, however I do feel ETH has had his eye on this job all season with the understanding that the real budget was £140m plus what he could recoup on player sales. This additional £20M will be the result of getting Pogba, Cavani, Mata, Lingard and Matic off the wage bill, A potential saving of 1 million pounds per week in wages which can then be monetised into budget before player sales.
I’m not convinced that every player we don’t like as fans, will be a player that Eric doesn’t like as well!
Like he said he has huge plans which means he probably has 3 phases of change.
Phase One: 22/23 (one season)
This is the most drastic change and we will definitely move out the obvious suspects this summer; Pogba, Cavani, Matic, Mata, Lingard plus player sales of ; Martial, Baily, D Henderson, A Pereira, Wan Bissaka, P Jones, B Williams, plus loan out F Pellistri, H Mejbri, C Savage, E Laird and a few others,
Realistically I can only see D Henderson maybe £30M and A Martial £25M recouping decent money plus another £35M for all the other players combined so 80-90m max meaning we have a true budget of £220-230M. The key here is I said two transfer windows for this budget so we need 7-8 players instantly, I think we will bring in 5-6 in the summer then 1-2 in the winter to achieve Phase 1 objective which is Top 4 and A cup win, preferably the Europa League which guarantees Champions league for Season of 23/34.
The squad I hope we have ;
D De Gea, S Johnstone * (F), T Heaton(3)
Defence
T Meunier * (15M) J Timber * (30m), D Dalot, V Lindelof, A Tuanzebe( ETH will improve), R Varane, H Maguire, L Shaw, A Telles (9)
Midfield
N Kante *(15M), J Garner, N De Jong * (60m), Fred, Mctominay, Bruno,DVB
C Erikssen (Free) (8)
Attack
M Rashford, A Elanga, * Antony (50M), A Diallo or T Chong, C Ronaldo, J Sancho, D Nunez * (60M) (7)
That’s a Total of £230 million Gross or £140m net and a squad of 27 with a view that 5 subs are now the norm in the PL and more game changing options are required plus potentially 17 games in Europa League.
Phase 2 - Season 23/24-24/25 (2)
ETH will have assessed the squad and I can easily see H Maguire, C Ronaldo, D De Gea, and Fred leaving with Europes best as options as upgrades. ETH will want to have united competing in a top 3 during these two seasons and have a consistent squad which gets 80-85 points and regularly wins cups or gets to finals. Expect to see Charlie McCann, Dialo and Ganaucho as regulars in this squad plus we will buy 2 top quality destructive CDM’s to replace Ngolo providing we buy him this summer. I think next summer we find the best young ball playing goal keeper maybe the Ajax GK but we will make a change in that department. Watch as the youth team and the women teams try to play the 4-1-2-3 formation and fluid movement system changes in game .
Phase 3 - 25-26 to 27-29 ( 3 seasons)
I expect a premier league Title during this period and a complete Stadium upgrade 85,000-90,000 capacity which is the envy of Europe.
A man can dream right, after all it’s called the ‘Theatre of Dreams’ for a reason!
