by Marcus Rashford, Casemiro, Jadon Sancho and Raphaël Varane would be the poster boys in any Sir Jim Ratcliffe white paper examining how Manchester United’s flat squad could be moved to a more modest or even performance-related pay structure.
In elite football’s world of hyper-inflated salaries performance-related pay is a pipe dream, but imagine if the United footballer’s lucrative base rate salary was slashed and generous incentives based on, for example, goal ratio and minutes were introduced which is played.
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Why? Because it is a sad truth for the United executive that no sane judge this season could make a credible case for Rashford, the main earner on around £435,000 a week, Casemiro (£430,000), Sancho (£350,000) and Varane (£340,000) which who brags to the club for its overly generous buck. It’s a trend that can be traced over the 11 years since Sir Alex Ferguson guided the club to its most recent league title.
Factors include the luck of a series of injuries and illness through a loss of form to Sancho’s stint with Erik ten Hag, which ended with his return to Borussia Dortmund on loan. They all point to the financial policy of recruitment, contract length and pay requiring a reboot for United’s long-term financial health.
In the frame for the above quartet and many others are Ten Hag, who has a veto of recruitment as a manager; his predecessor, Ole Gunnar Solskjær; the director of football, John Murtough, whose department has the other veto; Ed Woodward and Richard Arnold, the two past chief executives; and the owners, the Glazers, who signed every deal until Ratcliffe arrived on Christmas Eve.
With Ratcliffe, the new incoming 25% shareholder, and his top lieutenants, Sir Dave Brailsford and Jean-Claude Blanc, carrying out a structural assessment of how best to fix United, the situation is sure to unravel This bloated pay out. Injuries and other absences as well as loss of form are part of most any team but the wealth paid to United’s squad can be eye-watering when coupled with questionable recruitment and contract offers.
In the five months since the start of September United have paid a minimum of £500,000 in each of the 18 weeks (a total of at least £9m) to players who are not in match day squads due to injury, poor form, illness, issues private or, in the case of Sancho, for disciplinary reasons.
Sancho was, in fact, on strike after refusing Ten Hag’s demand to apologize for being a liar when it was claimed the forward was left out of the trip to Arsenal for not training to standard. Including the 3-1 loss at the Emirates Stadium on September 3, the 23-year-old missed 26 games while earning £9.1m. Whoever is right about Sancho and Ten Hag, there is little doubt that there has been a breakdown of the basic need to do nothing more to complicate the difficult business of winning games.
From here we move to Rashford, Varane and Casemiro. Loss of form is as undesirable (Rashford and Varane) as injury (Varane, again, and Casemiro). But as with Sancho, Ratcliffe hardly misses how costly his long absence has been. Should Varane and Casemiro be at the club or earn what they do? The owner of Ineos asked this about the latter during his trip on United last March.
Ratcliffe may also ask whether, in July, it was prudent to land Rashford United’s highest-paid footballer after returning 30 goals last term. A scan of his CV would reveal an uneven record of five goals in 2021-22 and, in previous seasons, 21, 22, 14, 13, 11 and eight goals in a total of 126 from 384 games.
Rashford’s campaign has been under siege so far – he has three goals – and last month Ten Hag dropped him for four games, from the 2-1 win at Chelsea on December 6 until he was sent off for a 3-2 win. Boxing Day for Aston Villa (he was ill when Bayern Munich lost 1-0 in the Champions League during this period).
For the full five months of the season, Rashford has earned £21.75m and if goals are the metric, his three goals cost the club £7.25m each. If the 26-year-old’s six assists are taken into account, Rashford’s price per nine “goal activity” remains an undervalued £2.41m.
There is less science to help assess Casemiro’s return to the pitch in midfield but, as Ratcliffe pointed out, his age may have weighed against the price and length of the contract – around £360,000 per a week as basic pay, plus 20% for the Champions League. quality, for four years – and the profile of the sales club.
The Brazilian was 30 in the summer of 2022. Real Madrid were willing to let the driving force of their past five Champions League victories go, a tip that could inform Ten Hag and Murtough about their assessment of Casemiro’s prospects.
The evidence of this season suggests that the 31-year-old may be on the decline. He was ruled out for three games (from 21-29 October) with an ankle injury then, after returning to Newcastle on 1 November, suffered a hamstring problem from which he has yet to recover. Casemiro was paid £7.3m during the 17 games lost.
In the summer of 2021, Real were willing to let Varane, who was 28 at the time, leave. From 3-26 September this season injury ruled the defender out for four games, he missed another game against Brentford on 7 October with what Ten Hag described as a “minor issue”, and was out of the XI, largely, for a loss of form for 10 games in a row – from the Manchester City goal in late October to Bayern’s win on 12 December. During the 14 games lost, he was paid £4.7m.
Add up the money paid to Sancho, Casemiro and Varane in his unavailability plus the price of Rashford’s goals and the sum is £26.5m: a figure that should interest Ratcliffe, who is the controller of United’s football operations (once the Premier League confirms his purchase) could see this as a useful chunk of the fee for the elite midfielder, No. 9 or Ten Hag goalkeeper.
For further evidence of United’s iffy value-for-money deals, consider Antony, who became United’s second-highest transfer in 2022 at £85m and earns £200,000 a week. He was given a leave of absence in September to address allegations about his private conduct, which he denies, and missed seven games. He subsequently missed a further seven for performance and in 21 games this season the forward has kept a clean sheet. Anthony Martial has made just seven starts this season and scored twice on his £250,000-a-week salary.
No player wants to miss games due to injury or illness, or loss of form, or whatever. But in an era of financial parity Ratcliffe certainly wishes United’s wage structure, contracts and recruitment were less expensive if such a thing were to happen.
