Michael Carrick has ruled out a £100m signing at Manchester United this summer, admitting the club cannot match the spending power of their title rivals. But the Carrick transfer stance does not mean the Red Devils are finished in this window, as the Guardian reports.
United have invested a reported £85m this window on Youri Tielemans and Andrey Santos, yet have never paid £100m for a single player — unlike Manchester City, Tottenham, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea, who have all broken that barrier in recent years. The admission came with Marcus Rashford back in the squad after his loan spell at Barcelona, though the forward’s long-term future at Old Trafford remains unresolved.
Carrick transfer message: ‘Money’s money’
“Money’s money. I get that,” the head coach said. “It’s still about football and that’s where the competition lies. What we feel naturally as a group is to try and win games. So there’s a lot that goes into that, but certainly the situation is what it is as well, whether that’s finances or whatever.”
Asked why the money from Champions League qualification — earned by last season’s third-place finish — cannot be spent on elite signings, Carrick was frank: “To be honest, I haven’t got the answers for that. We’re working with pushing everything that we can to make the best of it. For now, we’ve got to make the most of it, push everything in every boundary that we can to be able to win again, basically.”
With the window shutting on 1 September, United’s remaining business looks set to be selective rather than spectacular. Stay across all the latest United transfer news as deadline day approaches.
