Manchester United CEO Omar Berrada says the club are not finished yet in the transfer window and compared their only summer signing so far, Matheus Cunha, to the great Eric Cantona.
In an interview with The Athletic Berrada confirmed that the Red Devils will be “active” for the rest of the summer window as they look to hand manager Ruben Amorim the raw materials for a much better team next season.
To that end the Frenchman’s claims that there is alignment between Amorim and technical director Jason Wilcox, and that the “vision” for the squad is clear, bode well as the manager targets a return to Europe at the bare minimum.
Berrada said: “We’ve put ourselves in the best position possible by doing everything that we’ve had this year around cost-cutting.
“I’m confident that we will come out of the window with a much stronger team than what we’ve gone into.”
He admitted that “some player exits” are required in order to “balance the books”, news which is neither unsurprising nor unwelcome for fans growing impatient over still having the likes of Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford on the books.
The club are yet to make a sale this summer but it is only a matter of time until Alejandro Garnacho leaves, most likely to a Premier League rival, and Rasmus Hojlund is a major target for Inter Milan.
United’s one signing so far was snapped up quickly and efficiently when the club activated the release clause in Cunha’s contract with Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Berrada waxed lyrical over the £62.5m man, who he said is “a player that I think fans are going to love.”
He continued: “We can talk about his technical abilities and he can play in three different positions. He’s a playmaking attacking midfielder; he can score goals, he can make assists. I think he’s going to lift people off their seats.
“He’s got a bit of a swagger about him that people are going to really like. Dare I say, Cantona-esque. He was an important one to get done.”
The CEO then gave an interesting insight into how transfers are negotiated and made the seemingly counterintuitive claim that being quick and efficient isn’t always a good thing.
He explained: “We’re going to do our best to do more signings quickly. Sometimes when you’re not quick, it’s because you’re negotiating and you’re trying to make sure you get the right value for money. So being efficient or quick isn’t necessarily the best thing for the club.”
Featured image by Justin Setterfield via Getty Images
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
