Ruben Amorim: Manchester United need to sell players before buying this summer

GROWING PAINS: Manchester United head coach Ruben Amorim. Pic: Bradley Collyer/PA

Ruben Amorim warned Manchester United will have to sell before they can buy this summer due to financial constraints that are impacting different areas of the club.

Next Thursday marks a year since Jim Ratcliffe completed his deal to become minority owner of United and he has overseen some controversial, wide-ranging changes during that time.

Ticket price hikes have infuriated United fans, and the PA news agency understands those views were put to the British billionaire at a Fan Advisory Board meeting held at Carrington on Thursday.

The club shed a quarter of its staff over the summer and more redundancies are planned as the club continues to cut costs in a bid to reduce losses and aid investment in the team.

Next Thursday marks a year since Sir Jim Ratcliffe completed his deal to become minority owner of United (Martin Rickett/PA)

Amorim is attempting to oversee that challenging rebuild on the field and leads misfiring United to Tottenham on Sunday, ahead of which he nodded to the issues at hand.

“Our biggest problem now is Tottenham,” the head coach said. “We know the moment of the club. Of course I have to understand all of these problems but that problem of our club is not new. You already knew the rules of fair play.

“We have a problem at the moment, but that cannot influence the way I coach the team and prepare the next game, so my focus is on that and not the other things.”

Pushed on the longer-term impact after restrictions hampered their winter transfer business, Amorim said: “Here is simple – to do something we need to sell players.

“My focus is to prepare the game. We cannot do (signings) now. The window is closed.

“We need to focus on the games that we have, especially the next one, and then in the summer we will see.”

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The circumstances certainly make it harder to meet Ineos’ ‘Mission 21’ and ‘Project 150′ plans for United to win a 21st league title by the club’s 150th anniversary in 2028.

“Yes, we talk about that,” Amorim said. “With our focus, I sense from day one our focus is to win the Premier League and we can change everything in a few years.

“I don’t know how long it is going to take. At the moment we are in a difficult situation, the way we play, the games that we don’t win.

“We know that, but we need to work every day and to focus on the little steps, winning the next game, prepare very well the next summer and then we will see.”

In the short term, Amorim revealed United’s preparations for the trip to fellow strugglers Spurs have been derailed somewhat by fresh issues during a rare full week of training.

“It was a good week until two days ago,” Amorim said. “We had some problems also, so we don’t have players back.

To do something we need to sell players.

“Maybe we will have one or two issues, but we are waiting. We have one player also who is sick so we will see the team on the weekend.

“But it was good to work with the team, to feel the players and to try to improve our performance.”

Amorim indicated Mason Mount, Jonny Evans, Luke Shaw and Altay Bayindir will remain among the absentees on Sunday, with their new setbacks seeing some academy players called up for training.

The United boss seemed to confirm talented striker Chido Obi, 17, was among them in a week that saw him score a hat-trick in Wednesday’s 5-1 FA Youth Cup win against Chelsea.

“I don’t want to say names because we have to be careful on that,” Amorim said. “They are working with us.

“We had some problems this week. We called some players to be in our training, so we will have that evaluation, and he is one of them.”