Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward has told investors 'we aren’t afraid of moving in the market in a way that perhaps we haven’t seen in recent years.'
Woodward was speaking on a conference call after United posted record breaking financial results for the last three months of 2013. The chief executive made remark to the team's poor performance this before revealing that plans are afoot to rebuild the squad.
'It’s fair to say we are focused on strengthening the squad,' he remarked.
'Historically we’ve had three sales and three purchases each year and it’s possible we’ll do more than that but I can’t guide as to just where that may end up. It is a dynamic situation and obviously the market itself can throw up opportunities or the opposite of that as we go through the window.'
However he would not be drawn on exactly how many players David Moyes will look to sign, or how much will be spent:
'I’m not going to give a number or even a range on this, partly because it is a weather forecast - it’s subject to X players going out and Y players coming in and who those players are.
'You can obviously have some materially different numbers based on that. So I don’t think it will be helpful to guide on that but I would certainly guide that there is going to be an increase in the medium term.'
As The Times reports, Woodward also made a point of reassuring investors that the club are confident even if they don't qualify for the Champions League, their commercial appeal 'won't go away for a long time.'
Woodward went on to say 'Some of our competitors haven’t won the Premier League for a long time but still sell a huge number of shirts out there globally, some just down the road from us.'
'That’s not something I’m sitting here concerned about. What I am focused on is on that long-term strategy which is making sure that we’re building a competitive squad that challenges for trophies and that’s something we are doing.'
The planned squad rebuild will come as no surprise, considering how this season has gone, but just how far it will go remains to be seen. There's no doubt that Moyes is in the hunt for a left-back and central midfielder but they will now have to replace Nemanja Vidic at the very least, and possibly Rio Ferdinand as well.
With Chicarito posting cryptic messages on Instagram and Arsene Wenger refusing to rule out a move for Robin Van Persie then they could also find themselves searching for a new striker.
hat-tip: The Times
