Man Utd have made a habit of making rash decisions in the January transfer window but Ruben Amorim is singing from a different hymn sheet.
Ruben Amorim isn’t going to demand money to spend from Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox
If Manchester United need an example of a January transfer deal that turned out to be a success, then they only need to look at the captain they are now dreading being without for a week. Bruno Fernandes arrived in January 2020 and is the best signing the club have made in any transfer window for a long, long time.
Those sorts of success stories can be few and far between, but the secret to success in the mid-season market is not to get blown off course. The deals that turn out to be good ones are usually a case of a club fulfilling a long-standing interest in a player, rather than rushing into short-term or panicked deals.
Far too often, United’s recent January business has tended towards the latter. The jury is open on last season’s mid-season window dealings. Ayden Heaven had a good start to his United career but still has plenty to learn and after a shaky spell, Patrick Dorgu was much improved when returning to the team against Aston Villa on Sunday.
Maybe, in time, those will look like January steals, although United were shopping in the sales a year ago, so tight was their precarious financial situation. The purse strings are a little looser now and a £65million deal for Antoine Semenyo would fit the Fernandes mould. He is a player they have long admired and are making a move now because he is set to leave Bournemouth next month.
But that was not the case when loan moves were made for Wout Weghorst and Marcel Sabitzer in the winter of 2023, or Odion Ighalo in 2020. They might have been loans, but they don’t come without a cost and all of them speak to poor squad planning.
Amorim was asked about January plans at Villa Park, in the wake of seeing his captain go off injured, an extremely rare sight in the career of Fernandes, who has missed two games in nearly six years at Old Trafford. His answer might have disappointed fans desperate for a raft of activity next month, but it was sensible and reassuring for those keen to see a new outlook on recruitment.
“What we cannot do is to reach January and try to do everything in urgency and make mistakes,” he said. “And then here we go again with a lot of mistakes. I’m not going to get with Jason [Wilcox] and Omar [Berrada] and I’m going to say we need a lot of players because we have a plan.
“If we have to suffer, the club comes first. Of course, we are in the moment that we need points, but we need to find solutions and we are going to continue with our plan. Of course, you can feel that in this moment we are going to struggle, but we’ll see.”
We’ve seen plans change before, but it certainly sounds like Amorim is determined not to go down the short-term fix route. His reference to the mistakes of the past is accurate and those deals have got United nowhere. Loan moves in the middle of the season are unlikely to significantly enhance the quality of this squad.
Amorim would rather face short-term pain, whether that be turning to the academy or getting creative with his squad, such as fielding Lisandro Martinez in midfield. The risk is that it compromises the ambition of qualifying for the Champions League, but then who could add enough quality to strengthen that aim next month, without breaking the bank?
Maybe United will suffer for a little while. Amorim is banking that in the long run, focusing finances on targets that really will add quality will pay off. It sounds like a sensible strategy.