End-of-season decisions will change Manchester United as a club

With Rio Ferdinand possibly retiring and Nemanja Vidic off to Inter Milan, who will replace the two stalwarts at the back?

Possibility Two: Wholesale Squad Changes

Substantial additions, and subtractions, to the current squad of players are inevitable.

Consider the back-line: Nemanja Vidic is off to Inter Milan, and Patrice Evra may very well join him. Rio Ferdinand is probably on his way to retirement. Alexander Buttner could count the number of games he has played on his hand, with little confidence being shown in his abilities.

While Phil Jones, Jonny Evans and Chris Smalling will stay, only Jones seems to be good enough to play for United. At right-back, for all his forward endeavors, Rafael is a walking liability. Conclusion: four defenders can be expected in the summer transfer window.

The same can be said of the mid-field, where Fellaini has been an unqualified failure/misfit (depending on how angry one is), and Juan Mata constantly played out of position. Nani, Antonio Valencia and Ashley Young top the deadwood list. The case of Shinji Kagawa has everyone mystified, while Ryan Giggs is surely in his last year as player.

Tom Cleverley, despite being 24 years old, continues to be branded as a young player by Moyes whenever the former’s ability is questioned. The only bright spot has been Adnan Januzaj, and it speaks volumes about a club when a nineteen-year-old in his first season as a senior player is expected to save the team.

Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher are not the players they once were, and Wilfried Zaha’s loan spell at Cardiff is indicative of the confidence Moyes has in the youngster Ferguson paid £15 mln for.

The attack seems to be well-covered, with Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie, Danny Welbeck, and Javier Hernandez capable of finishing, but only when presented with opportunities.

Conclusion?

A massive squad overhaul not seen since Chelsea circa 2004 is in the offing. Sums such as £150m and £200m are already being bandied about as being available to Moyes in the summer.

However, a splurge will again split United at its seam. A club, that has promoted its youth set-up for so long and taken pride at the players it has produced, would be left with no place to hide when multiple £40m players make their way into Carrington. What would all the fans do when they see their own team brandishing the cheque book, not unlike their Blue neighbours? Years of mocking Chelsea and Manchester City of having ‘bought’ their way to success would come back to haunt them. And this would be even before success was delivered.

The possibility of a humongous spending spree is 100%, whether Moyes is sacked or not. But what happens to the club’s self-professed 659 million supporters? What happens to the uniqueness that brought them to the club?

Is Juan Mata just the first of many big-money signings to join Manchester United?

More importantly, what happens to the things United stands for? Over the last decade and more, it has stood out from the sometimes crazy, always chaotic, world of football and its never-ending incidents of poor decision-making on the administrative level. The club, and its supporters, have taken immense pride in being run in an almost old-fashioned way in an era of three-year contracts and regular breaking of club transfer records.

Ferguson would get the cheque book out regularly, sure. But he would never make heads turn by making obscenely expensive signings, leaving it to the likes of Chelsea, Manchester City, Real Madrid and Barcelona to be the focus of fans’ capitalism-stemming vitriol.

Should Moyes be sacked, or an almost-cathartic squad overhaul take place, or both; Manchester United will not be the club that it has been for the last 25 years, or at least purported to be. It will just be another institution, great nonetheless, caught in the race of achieving success using short-cuts. The romance in football would shrink in size, consumed and subsumed by the green of money and the red of impatience.