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It is in stark contrast to the current summer, where the Red Devils’ only senior sale agreed has been 21-year-old Tyler Fredricson.
The full-back made four appearances before moving to the Ineos-owned Lausanne Sport in Switzerland – so he barely counts.
While United’s Big Six rivals are splashing the cash, the Red Devils are paying the price for years of a sub-par approach to sales.
Arsenal, hot in the pursuit of Real Madrid superstar Vinicius Jr, are the only one of those clubs to have splashed less cash than the Old Trafford outfit.
The Red Devils have so far spent just £87million on Andrey Santos, Youri Tielemans, Tynan Thompson, while keeper Karl Darlow has arrived on a free.
Put simply, the more cash that United generate from outgoings, the more they can spend – and the lack of sales are hurting them.
Manchester City and Chelsea regularly lean on their network of sister clubs to trade players for profit.
That could be a homegrown academy product sold, for example, from Chelsea to Strasbourg.
Or a BlueCo-owned player going the other way before getting flipped within 18 months for a profit on the Stamford Bridge books.
Ineos also own Nice – but United have not taken advantage of that relationship, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe looking to sell the French-owned club. While hardly fetching mega sums, United’s academy still sells.
Andreas Pereira (£10m), James Garner (£15m), Dean Henderson (£20m), Anthony Elanga (£15m) and Alejandro Garnacho (£40m) all moved to Premier League rivals since 2022.
But Kobbie Mainoo and Shea Lacey are the only current first-team players produced by United’s academy.
Garnacho was the last United graduate to generate serious profit when Chelsea brought him last summer.
Nineteen years ago, United were pulling in good money for players they wanted to sell. In the same summer they signed Nani, Anderson and Owen Hargreaves.
Kieran Richardson joined Sunderland for £5.5m, while fellow academy graduate Giuseppe Rossi relocated to Villarreal permanently for £6.7m.
Alan Smith went to Newcastle for £6million and Gabriel Heinze headed to Real Madrid for £8m, having failed to engineer a move to bitter rivals Liverpool.
United were in a position of strength as reigning Prem champions.
And it helped that playing for Sir Alex Ferguson increased a player’s valuation.
Roy Keane could barely stomach sharing the same oxygen as Ferguson after United dumped him – but still signed five players from his old club as Sunderland boss.
It is incredible that Garnacho, Scott McTominay, Rasmus Hojlund, Mason Greenwood, Daniel James, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Angel Di Maria and Romelu Lukaku are the only players United have sold for £25m or more.
The Red Devils desperately trumpeted Garnacho to Chelsea as a record academy sale at £40m.
He appeared to be sold on the cheap but Garnacho, now at Aston Villa, was so feckless that Chelsea might even have overpaid.
Out-of-favour forward Joshua Zirkzee is still on United’s books and Marcus Rashford remains in the building after a permanent move to Barcelona fell through following his loan.
It has been so long since Rashford was last back in the fold at United that he has not set foot in their new £50m building at Carrington, reopened a year ago.
It is a blow for Rashford that Villa, his ex-club who he thanked for his England World Cup 2026 call-up, opted for Garnacho, his old United left-wing challenger.
Rashford is not exactly old at 28 – but Villa and Barca moved for younger wingers.
His £325,000 weekly salary makes a sale prohibitive.
Even Richardson, a very different left winger at Old Trafford 20 years ago, was an easier sell – Sun.
Online Reporter