2025 Summer Transfer Window Review
Have the board done enough this Summer?
OUT:
Alejandro Garnacho (AM) - Chelsea - £40m (plus 10% sell-on clause)
Antony (AM) - Real Betis - £19m (plus £2.6m in potential add-ons & 50% sell-on profit clause)
Rasmus Hojlund (ST) - Loan - Napoli - £5.2m loan fee (plus £38m option/conditional obligation to buy) - 100% wages
Jadon Sancho (AM) - Loan - Aston Villa - (undisclosed loan fee (£2-4m?)) - 80% wages
Andre Onana (GK) - Loan - Trabzonspor - 100% wages
Marcus Rashford (AM) - Loan - Barcelona - (£30m option to buy) - 100% wages
Victor Lindelof (CB) - End of Contract
Jonny Evans (CB) - Retired
Christian Eriksen (CM) - End of Contract
Toby Collyer (CM) - Loan - West Brom
TOTAL: ~£65m (if all add-ons & clauses triggered, plus around £70m) - £135m
IN:
Diego Leon (LB) - Cerro Porteno - £3.3m (plus £3.7m in potential add-ons)
Matheus Cunha (AM/ST) - Wolves - £62.5m
Bryan Mbeumo (AM) - Brentford - £65m (plus £6m in potential add-ons)
Benjamin Šeško (ST) - RB Leipzig - £66.4m (plus £7.3m in potential add-ons)
Senne Lammens (GK) - Standard Liege - £18.2m
TOTAL: £215.4m + £17m in potential add-ons - £232.4m
2025’s Summer transfer window was perhaps one of the most important in the recent history of Manchester United Football Club.
A 15th place finish and a silverware-less season meant that Ruben Amorim’s squad clearly required a wholesale makeover, not just to reset the culture and mindset within the club, but to bring in players who were capable of executing the 3-4-3 plan that the Portugese maestro is seemingly so tied to.
So how did the top brass do?
Let’s start with the first, key, part of a rebuild - removing those you don’t want around, those who don’t fit what you’re trying to do and those who may facilitate further buys.
In general, it looks like they did an ‘OK’ job. The creation of the much-maligned ‘bomb squad’ didn’t really help United’s bargaining position on any of those players, so while on the face of it, you’d say the club should have got more money for certain players, the semi-guaranteed £100m from Garnacho, Antony and Hojlund will do a lot for the balance sheet.
If Rashford’s deal is made permanent, that’s another very helpful £30m in profit for the PSR calculation, but the real triumph in the exits this summer was on making clubs pay most of the wages of those United couldn’t offload permanently.
If Rashford, Sancho, Onana, Antony, Hojlund, Eriksen and Lindelof’s wages are now all mostly off the books, that’s a lot of money the club is saving. Let’s imagine that the average wage cost to the club for those players is somewhere around £180,000 a week - 180k x 52 = £9.36m x 7 players = £65 million off the wage bill.
Therefore, United haven’t just brought in £100m this summer, they’ve brought in at least £165m with the potential of more, plus some decent sell-on clauses to help in the future.
Speaking of which, the sell-on clauses inserted into Alvaro Fernandez, Anthony Elanga and Maxi Oyedele, added on to the £5m Chelsea paid to send Sancho back, netted United another £20m this summer.
Overall, the number is likely around £190m - it looks like the club is finally operating as a sensible business again and making sure they receive enough value from outgoings to fund improvement of the squad. It’s this that looks like there certainly won’t be any PSR issues in the near future.
New arrivals making an impact
So, what about the all-important incomings?
Diego Leon is an 18-year-old project, bought for very little and will take time. However, he looked strong, powerful and full of potential in his pre-season appearances and the impression he made facilitated the loan of Harry Amass to Sheffield Wednesday, so the coaching staff must have liked what they saw. We’ll need plenty more time to assess this one though.
Matheus Cunha has come in and been one of United’s best players already this season before his unfortunate injury in the Burnley game. £62.5m feels a little rich, but £55-65m was the going rate this summer for attacking midfielders and wingers, while it was a simple release clause deal, so the price was the price.
Cunha seems like he’s got that edge that many ‘United’ players of old seemed to carry - that bite and ability to create something out of nothing. He’s flexible and versatile too, something I’ll come on to later, but something that will serve the club well in the future. A good signing all things considered.
Bryan Mbeumo falls into a similar category to Cunha - Premier League proven, in his prime and at £65m, at the top end of what we should have paid, but that’s the going rate. He’s already shown plenty to suggest that he’ll be an important part of this team going forwards, with a goal against Burnley the least he’s deserved so far.
Mbeumo is another who is versatile, hard working, mature and provides a higher baseline for the team - all key points for a club that desperately needs to change its culture and mindset.
But then, it seemed as if the philosophy switched towards the end of the window - Benjamin Šeško was signed for £66.4 million up front and while the 22-year-old has been tracked for many years by most of Europe’s top clubs, this felt a little more of a gamble.
Clearly, if ‘big ben’ can work out, he’ll prove a shrewd investment at a fair price given some of the other Striker deals that went through in this summer’s market (see Isak, Woltemade, Gyokeres etc.) However, we’ve seen young players come in for big prices before and fail to live up to the expectation set for them (not necessarily from within).
Every game he goes without scoring, the pressure will ramp up. He was decent for half an hour in the Derby; holding the ball up, winning headers, running in behind. But once United went behind, the same pattern of not using the striker at all emerged once again. The same pattern that did for Rasmus Hojlund.
United have to fix this, and fix it soon, or they’ll risk another talented young striker falling by the wayside, thrown to the wolves. Ben is obviously a hugely talented player, but he needs help to show it.
Finally, the problem Goalkeeper position was addressed very late in the window. United brought in the promising Belgian, Senne Lammens, for a reasonable-looking fee, while Andre Onana’s error-strewn, confidence-sapping time at the club came to an end with a loan to Trabzonspor.
Firstly, this was far too late to avoid the embarrassing Carabao Cup defeat to Grimsby, and secondly, this wasn’t the ready-made option it seemed that the team needed. But that in itself doesn’t mean that the signing was a poor one.
Lammens is likely going to be eased into a role that comes with a bucket-load of pressure, which is a sensible decision given he’s 23 and has only really played one full season of senior football. What that does mean is that Altay Bayindir will be #1 for at least the next few weeks.
It’s not disastrous, but it’s also hardly confidence inspiring - Bayindir is nervy and relatively weak, as we’ve seen on multiple occasions, so it surely won’t be long until Lammens displaces him, if he’s as good as the club hope. So, it’ll take a while for us to assess this buy.
All-in-all, the business done by the club this summer has been pretty good and if we were just rating the window based on that, it’d be somewhere between a 7 and 8 out of 10.
However, the ultimate rating has to be based on what United DIDN’T do as well, and this is a huge, huge problem for Amorim.
Last season, the main reasons United lost games were because of individual errors in the sticks, an inability to match teams physically, a lack of control, a fragile mentality and not scoring enough goals.
The club will feel they’ve done the work to address the latter point and the signing of Lammens may well help the first point, but apart from the signing of Šeško, the club has done absolutely nothing to address point two and they have neglected points three & four.
We’ve already seen the problems rearing their ugly head in the first five games of the season and it’s clear that United will rue not being able to bring in at least a physical, mobile, dominating central midfielder in the mould of a Baleba for example.
Amorim’s system is reliant on players with certain attributes fulfilling certain roles and while we can see progress in the way we attack (although goals return hasn’t yet proved this 100%), everything else remains the same - BECAUSE THE PERSONNEL IS THE SAME. The same mental fragilities and physical inadequacies are still there, because apart from the front three, THE PERSONNEL IS THE SAME.
I feel that the club has hung their head coach out to dry by not addressing the midfield and the defence this summer - only Crystal Palace and Fulham brought in fewer players than Manchester United in the transfer window and if you consider that only four players have been brought into a first-team squad that finished 15th last season, what do you realistically expect from United and Amorim this season?
The head coach has always been clear on his system and his way of playing - the board bought in to this and continue to do so - but the club categorically has not backed him to the extent he needed to make him successful. Bruno Fernandes, the club’s best player, is having to be deployed in a spot that maximises his weaknesses (partly due to his midfield partners) and minimises his strengths - this is unacceptable.
In truth, players like Bayindir, Shaw, Dalot, Ugarte and Casemiro should not still be at the club in September 2025 and United should have sourced replacements for every single one of them during the summer. Excuses for not doing so simply aren’t good enough given that Amorim had half a season to work it all out with the board, the scouting team etc.
So it now seems inevitable that the problems will continue, the errors will keep coming and the results will continue to be not good enough.
I said before that this window could be one of the most important in recent times for Manchester United, but it feels like those with the power to change things didn’t grasp its importance - apart from scoring more goals, almost all of the biggest issues the squad has were left unaddressed.
Therefore, the window can’t be rated any higher than a 5/10 - United are still weak, physically and mentally, they still struggle to control a game, they can’t stop teams creating big chances and the head coach is almost being forced to play his best player in a position that nullifies his quality and exposes his flaws.
Perhaps admitting defeat on the Bruno CM experiement and starting Mainoo in there will help (shifting the captain to one of the 10 spots), but it’s papering over cracks.
The transfer window was a start, but it wasn’t even close to being enough for Ruben Amorim and the coming weeks may well prove that this past summer will be his first and last in charge of Manchester United.
