Manchester United’s £52.1m signing of 18-year-old defender Lenny Yoro is a key turning point for minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe as he attempts to reset the club’s recruitment policy and make determination rather than desperation the new guiding principle at Old Trafford.
For the first time in a long time no one wants to remember — perhaps since the days before Manchester City were taken over by Abu Dhabi in 2008 — United have beaten their main rivals to sign a player regarded as one of the brightest young talents in football.
Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain were both keen to sign the France Under-21 international from Lille this summer, but neither responded to United’s final bid for the player, who has just 12 months left on his Ligue 1 contract. Lloro has even expressed his preference for a move to Madrid, and could be set to move to the Santiago Bernabeu for a fee slightly higher than the compensation a club would pay to a player under the age of 24 when he leaves the club that raised him.
But United’s persistence and willingness to pay the player’s fee now has convinced Lille, with Yoreau convinced that Old Trafford and the Premier League would be the perfect destination for the next stage of his career.
United have brought in a number of young talents in recent years, but none of them have been targets of their main rivals. Jadon Sancho (£73m, Borussia Dortmund), Anthony (£80.9m, Ajax) and Rasmus Højlund (£72m, Atalanta) all arrived at Old Trafford for exorbitant transfer fees despite United having no clear competitor for each player. Meanwhile, attempts to sign Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham from FC Salzburg and Birmingham City respectively in 2019-20 were aborted as United failed to convince either player that they were better options than Borussia Dortmund.
It’s different. United not only won the bid but negotiated a realistic fee and completed the deal before a ball was even kicked in pre-season, dragging out negotiations until August and not allowing the panic trading that has defined the club’s recent transfer business to take hold.
So what has changed? Ratcliffe just wants United to target the best young talent and move faster to get deals done. The days of squandering a fortune on big-money, older players are over.
“I’d rather sign the next (Kylian) Mbappe than spend big money on buying success,” Ratcliffe said in March. “It’s not that smart to sign Mbappe. Anyone can figure that out. It’s harder to find the next Mbappe, the next Jude Bellingham, the next Roy Keane.”
The roots of United’s new approach can be traced to an audit carried out a year ago by Ratcliffe’s INEOS team after they bought a minority stake in the club from the Glazer family and took over football operations.
During a lengthy due diligence period that scrutinised United’s finances, Ratcliffe instructed senior advisers including Sir Dave Brailsford, Rob Nevin and Jean-Claude Blanc to assess the club’s recruitment over the past five years at Old Trafford. One source told ESPN that the audit found excessive spending, indecisiveness that resulted in inflated transfer fees and a flawed policy of extending player contracts to prevent them becoming free agents. The latter policy alone led to the view that United had bloated the squad with several players who should have been moved two or three years earlier.
There has already been a shift in approach this summer, with defender Raphael Varane and striker Anthony Martial leaving at the end of their contracts, and £40m already raised after the departures of striker Mason Greenwood (Marseille), defenders Willy Kambala (Villarreal) and Alvaro Fernandez (Benfica) and midfielder Donny van de Beek (Girona). More are likely to leave, and United have shown a ruthlessness not seen since Sir Alex Ferguson retired as manager in 2013.
Defenders Harry Maguire, Victor Lindelof, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, midfielders Scott McTominay and Christian Eriksen (all of whom are under contract until 2025) could leave this summer if offered, according to ESPN, while former Madrid midfielder Casemiro is also available despite having two years remaining on his contract. Forward Anthony could be loaned out if the club is willing to pay his £70,000-a-week wage. It feels like a step in the right direction, but it’s something United have been largely resistant to in recent years under the Glazers.
“Joel and Avram (the Glazers) would be happy to get rid of Wan-Bissaka or Lindelof,” the source told ESPN. “But they looked at the numbers and said, ‘How much can you afford to pay them and how much does it cost to replace them?’ When you hear that keeping players until the end of their contracts costs half as much as getting rid of them and bringing in a replacement, the answer is always to keep them for another year.
“They would rather lose a player for free and pay him £10m in wages than spend £20m more to sign a better player and replace him.”
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That policy is now history. Ratcliffe has hired Omar Berrada, CEO, Dan Ashworth, sporting director and Jason Wilcox, technical director, to run Old Trafford’s football operations team, and the trio have pushed for a more streamlined and agile approach. John Murtough, who left his role as football director in April, drew up a list of targets with Matt Hargreaves, director of negotiations, earlier this year, and it has formed the blueprint for United’s summer strategy. The club is particularly targeting players entering the final year of their contracts because of their ability to exploit clubs that have to make financial, rather than football, decisions.
The difference this year is that Ashworth and Wilcox are working under a structure led by Ratcliffe and Berrada, former Manchester City chief operating officers who put together Haaland’s deal in 2022, rather than the sclerotic regime of the Glazers.
Another key element is that manager Erik ten Hag now has a reduced role in player recruitment, with Ashworth and Wilcox taking the key decisions and actions, although he remains involved and has a say.
It’s a significant change. Ten Hag had identified Barcelona’s Frenkie de Jong as his top target in the first summer, telling United he had been given assurances from the former Ajax midfielder that he wanted to move to Old Trafford. But despite Ten Hag’s claims, sources told ESPN that De Jong’s camp made it clear to United executives a month before the deadline that the Netherlands international, having endured nearly two years of COVID restrictions during his time at Camp Nou, would not be moving to United and wanted to experience life in the Spanish city as usual.
Ten Hag continued to insist a deal was possible, but by the time it became clear De Jong would not be leaving Barcelona, they had little choice and, after losing their first two games of the season, panic set in and they ended up signing Casemiro from Real Madrid for £70m.
That scenario is unlikely under the new structure, and the policy of moving quickly if a deal doesn’t happen is evident in the move for Yoro. After Everton rejected two bids for Jarrad Branthwaite, Ashworth and Wilcox decided to increase their offer for Yoro and instead strike a deal for a Ligue 1 player. United could still return for Branthwaite or increase their interest in Bayern Munich’s Matthijs de Ligt, but by bringing in Yoro, they have at least addressed one key recruitment area.
The 18-year-old was seen as an opportunity United could not afford to miss, sources say. He was on United’s radar. The club had been quietly laying the groundwork for a move before the end of the 2023-24 season, with club leaders and managers having held several meetings with him to explain how he would fit in. After being fooled by Real when they tried to sign Eduardo Camavinga from Rennes in 2021, United decided to move quickly this time around and have been rewarded for doing so.
United’s first summer signing was the £36.5m signing of 23-year-old Bologna striker Joshua Zirkzee. The Netherlands international is seen as a player who can play in a number of attacking positions and ease the goalscoring burden on Høyrund. He also fits the profile of being young and relatively cheap.
With more than six weeks left in the summer transfer window, United still have some issues to sort out in their squad. They are targeting a defensive midfielder and an additional centre-half, and could look to bring in other reinforcements if they can afford to offload more veterans.
Whatever happens here, the reset button at Old Trafford has been firmly pressed by Ratcliffe and his team. United are quicker, more decisive, spend less and are more clinical when it comes to moving their players. The panic and incompetence have disappeared, but ultimately the success of the new approach can only be judged by what happens on the pitch.
But for the first time in years there are positive signs at United.
