Jurrien Timber transfer can help end worrying trend at Manchester United

Manchester United's transfer business over the past decade has been much maligned by the fanbase. Players have been constantly bought and failed to live up to their potential while earning big wages.

Angel Di Maria and Romelu Lukaku were both bought for over £50m by United, failed to make the desired impact and then sold for a loss. Paul Pogba was bought for a record fee and is now set to leave for a free transfer this summer when his contract expires. Many fans would argue this is not a sustainable model.

Losing money on players, however, maybe better than the alternative. There are a number of players currently on the books at United who are earning a high wage compared to their ability and they are not useful to the current squad, so are just blocking the squad from being refreshed.

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Under Ed Woodward, players like Andreas Pereira, Phil Jones and Eric Bailly were all given new contracts when it was clear that long term they would not be useful to the squad and the deals would be a barrier to United trying to sell them. Finally, there are players that were bought with great potential, but the club failed to develop them properly.

So that is the squad that United have to compete against their rivals with; a complete mish-mash of players that will never truly be good enough to go against them. And the reason why is reflected when you compare the profit that the club's rivals have received from player sales comparatively, as you can see from the graphic below.

Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal have all earned over £200m in profit in player sales, whereas United have only earned £70m over the course of five years. This