Transfer Centre

Ed Woodward hints at quieter summer transfer window for Manchester United

By Barney Corkhill, Editor | 09 February 2017

Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward hints that the club will not make major changes to their squad during the summer transfer window.

Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward has hinted that the club will not make wholesale changes to their squad when the summer transfer window opens.

The Red Devils made major waves in the transfer market upon the arrival of Jose Mourinho last summer, breaking the world record with the £89m arrival of Paul Pogba while also bringing in Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly.

United still only sit sixth in the Premier League table, but Woodward insists that Mourinho is happy with his current squad and stressed that there is not likely to be a major overhaul of players.

"Are we happy with the roster at this point? Yes, I think there's a happiness from the manager at this point, as you can tell in all his recent interviews in terms of where we are as a squad. I think there's always going to be continual improvement. I think even if you win everything, you still want to improve the squad - that's the nature of the dynamic industry that we're in," he is quoted as saying by PA.

"But I think we aren't necessarily in a position where we have to churn a large number of players. I think I've guided before that we want to get to a more steady state and be buying and potentially selling a lower number of players each year.

"I think we're in that kind of environment now compared to where we were two, three years ago, when perhaps there was a little more churn required from the playing squad perspective. And in terms of guidance around that, obviously we don't guide around player spend. It's a number you can track almost on a deal-by-deal basis because things are very widely published when they happen, but it is not something we will guide on."

United have been heavily linked with a big-money move for Atletico Madrid striker Antoine Griezmann this summer.