Cristiano Ronaldo's desire to leave Manchester United would free-up a significant amount of funds for the club as they drastically reduce their outgoings from last year.
Ronaldo wants to leave United after just one season due to their failure to secure Champions League football. The 37-year-old returned to United last year, but the return has not worked out as planned as the club finished sixth in the Premier League last season – 11 points off the top five and enduring a miserable campaign.
The Portuguese superstar may have netted 24 goals in all competitions last season in a deeply dysfunctional team but he will celebrate his 38th birthday next season and can limit what United are capable of doing, alongside being the club’s highest-earning player.
As per figures from Spotrac, Ronaldo is comfortably the highest-paid star at Old Trafford with wages of £510k per week. Over the course of a year, this adds up to £26.52million. The next highest earner at the club is David De Gea, on £19.5million per annum.
There has already been a significant exodus of players from United this year. Paul Pogba is on the lookout for a new club after United confirmed his exit at the end of his contract before the club also said their goodbyes to Jesse Lingard. Spanish playmaker Juan Mata's exit at the end of his contract was then confirmed on Thursday.
Nemanja Matic has departed too, joining Roma, while Edinson Cavani and Lee Grant – who has taken up a coaching role at Ipswich Town – have also left the first-team squad at United. Dean Henderson has joined Nottingham Forest on a season-long loan deal, with the full amount of his wages being covered by the newly-promoted club.
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With the seven players who have left the squad, this amounts to a total saving of £53.64million per year from the club on its wage bill. Unsurprisingly, Pogba is the biggest saving in wages – the Frenchman was earning £15.08million per year in wages from United.
The next highest-earning of the departures was Uruguayan striker Cavani who was pocketing an eye-catching annual salary of £13million while Mata was next up with a yearly wage of £8.3million. Matic was on a contract of £6.2million per year, while Lingard earned £3.9million annually with back-up goalkeeper Grant on £1.56million. Henderson – who is scheduled to return to Old Trafford next summer – has a yearly wage of £5.5million.
If Ronaldo’s salary is added to this list of exits, it would take the club’s savings on its annual wage bill up to a staggering £80.3million. Of the other players who have been made available to other clubs this summer, Aaron Wan-Bissaka earns £4.6million per year while Jones is on £3.9million annually. However, the £13million annual wage of striker Anthony Martial – who did not score a goal in La Liga for Sevilla during a loan spell – will be the one that the club are particularly keen to offload.
United are yet to make any new signings this summer, but they do have an agreement in place to sign Feyenoord defender Tyrell Malacia while they do have an initial transfer fee agreed with Barcelona for £56.2million to sign midfielder Frenkie de Jong.
