Things are going mad at Manchester United. It makes Chelsea look normal. Sir Jim Ratcliffe took a slice of the club a year ago and has since been thrashing around cutting costs, all while the team go to pieces out on the pitch.
As an an example of the chaos he had inherited, Ratcliffe turned to the example of Jadon Sancho, a player United bought from Borussia Dortmund for £73m just a few years ago. After a disaster spell in Manchester, Sancho escaped on loan to Chelsea in the summer. He’s played regularly, and his loan will become a permanent move this summer pending a few objectives the team have to reach.
But it turns out United haven’t even finished paying Dortmund for him:
“For Sancho, who now plays for Chelsea and we pay half his wages, we’re paying £17m to buy him in the summer,” Ratcliffe told the BBC.
So while we will pay something like £25m to buy Sancho, almost all of that will be passed on to Dortmund as the remaining part of the fee still owed. You can see why Ratcliffe used it as an example of the mismanagement on the football side.
Sancho set for Chelsea despite slightly disappointing season
Red Devils manager Ruben Amorim, however, has already distanced himself from the situation. Last month in a press conference, he bluntly stated: “I’m focused on my players and my problems. Sancho is not my problem.”
That’s fair enough, given the chaos at Old Trafford and the awful results that have been rolling in since Amorim took over. The last thing he needs on his plate is worries about players who aren’t even available to him right now.
We still can’t expect anything other than this transfer happening – the terms aren’t known exactly, but Fabrizio Romano reporting from earlier this year made it very clear that the trigger to turn the deal permanent is so easy to achieve that’s it’s on the verge of being a mathematical certainty – and in fact may already be one.
