Ole Gunnar Solskjaer believes Manchester United retain the power to compete with the best in the transfer market amid warnings their status as England’s richest club is “at risk”.
According to Deloitte’s Football Money League, United’s revenue of £627.1million for 2018-19 put them third overall behind only Barcelona and Real Madrid.
But the accountancy firm warned United could soon find themselves slipping behind the likes of Liverpool and Manchester City due to their failure to qualify for the Champions League.
However, Solskjaer offered a robust defence of the club’s status.
“The most important thing for me is we get the results sorted and the performances on the pitch,” he said.
“But I know that we’ve got the resources, we’ve got the backing. If we need to go into the transfer market we are still up there so we’re still in a good place.”
United are reportedly in talks over a deal for Sporting Lisbon midfielder Bruno Fernandes which could cost as much as £70million, though Solskjaer offered no update on that or any other moves in the January market.
“I’ve got no transfer updates,” he said. “If we get something we can tell you about we will, but we’ve got no news now.”
Solskjaer was speaking ahead of Wednesday’s FA Cup third-round replay at home to Wolves.
The match could offer another opportunity to 18-year-old striker Mason Greenwood, who started in the goalless draw between the two sides at Molineux on January 4.
Greenwood has enjoyed a hugely impressive season to date, scoring nine goals for United’s senior side in 26 appearances and bagging his first goal for England Under-21s, but Solskjaer cautioned against England taking him to Euro 2020 amid concerns over the availability of the injured Harry Kane.
“I think Mason will have a top career, a long career, but let the boy settle in now before we talk about England and the Euros,” he said.
“His focus has to be playing for us and improving. When he plays well for us, that will happen by itself.”
Solskjaer is trying to carefully manage the demands on his younger players, and his squad as a whole, as they prepare for their 14th game in 46 days.
“It is physically and mentally demanding and we’ve got to make sure we energise them with results,” he said.
“After a performance like Norwich (a 4-0 win) they all felt good about that and used that as motivation.
“We’re not there yet, we’ve got to keep working and improving, just keep the rhythm. I didn’t play in all these games when I was playing but I felt like, as a team, we improved when we got in a rhythm of match, rest, match, rest.
“The likes of Roy (Keane), Gary (Neville), (Paul) ‘Scholesy’, they only seemed to improve and we need to get to that.”
With United well off the pace in the Premier League and needing to overturn a 3-1 first-leg deficit to rivals Manchester City in the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup, Solskjaer is looking to the FA Cup as the most realistic prospect of silverware this season.
“This tournament is one that we all dream about winning when we’re young,” he said.
“I loved my time in the finals and lifting the trophy, so we want to go through.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here