What Manchester United’s midfield makeover reveals about their transfer strategy under Michael Carrick

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The Independent

13 July 2026

At least

Manchester United

should have a specialist in the subject overseeing matters. Their summer midfield overhaul is being conducted with a midfielder at the helm. He has started with his old role.

Michael Carrick

’s first buy has been

Andrey Santos

, for an initial £48m. His second is set to be

Youri Tielemans

, for £35m. It appeared it would be Ederson, for a similar fee, but United have put a move on hold after the Brazilian failed a medical.

So the midfield merry-go-round at Old Trafford appears to have accelerated. Or, some would say, veered off course, given the change in names. There will be no Elliot Anderson or Mateus Fernandes; nor, seemingly,

Aurelien Tchouameni

, who has signed a new contract at Real Madrid. It is hard to escape the sense that United are down to the second tier of targets or that a club who have long been big spenders are being outbid, forced to operate on the cheap. If so, they have further reasons to regret overspending in the past. Last year was the summer of the £70m forward for United;

this, so far, is the window of the £30m-£50m midfielder.

open image in gallery

Youri Tielemans appears set to join

(PA)

The numbers feel instructive. For once, United have been blown out of the water by rivals. Tielemans and Santos have a combined cost of around the £85m Tottenham paid for Mateus Fernandes. Even had they added Ederson, it would be little more than the £116m

Manchester City will fork out for Elliot Anderson.

Andrey Santos, left, has joined

and

, right, could soon follow (PA)

Even as United have moved a little closer to building their £2bn stadium, there is a sense of an enforced austerity to the rebuild on the pitch. Some of their plans have not come off. They can’t sell

Manuel Ugarte

yet,

because he was injured at the World Cup

, while Barcelona did not take up their option to buy the big earner

Marcus Rashford

. Andre Onana has been loaned to Trabzonspor again, but not sold. United may be running out of ways to bolster the budget.

And meanwhile, the midfield market was inflated: in part by Tottenham, committing £100m to Tonali and then a further £85m to Fernandes. United have boxed clever in some respects: Ederson has a year left on his Atalanta contract and he looked a value-for-money option. Tielemans has a release clause in his

Aston Villa

contract and,

in the age of the £100m midfielder,

passers of his calibre are rarely sold for a third of that. But he is 29; it is not a repeat of paying £63m for

Casemiro

when he was in his thirties, but United may end up again with a player with no resale value.

But there is a logic to signing him. It weakens a rival; United and Villa could end up contesting a Champions League place and, with

Amadou Onana sidelined by a cruciate ligament injury

, Villa’s midfield looks weakened. Tielemans could prove a difference-maker. His three years under Unai Emery were a success. United would probably settle for their next three bringing Champions League qualification twice, a run to its quarter-finals and a European trophy, with Tielemans’ own form such that he won the club’s player-of-the-year award once, for his superlative 2024-25 campaign. Tielemans’ talismanic qualities were apparent both in the Europa League final against Freiburg, when he scored Villa’s opener, and when he powered Belgium’s comeback against Senegal with two goals.

Youri Tielemans scored for

in the Europa League final (Getty)

If United harbour regrets about Tielemans, they may be that they did not sign him sooner, or cheaper. It remains a mystery why other clubs overlooked him in 2023, allowing Villa to recruit him on a free transfer, as meanwhile midfielders were starting to command £100m fees. United, among others, should have gone for him then. Instead, they loaned Sofyan Amrabat and bought Manuel Ugarte the following summer; each more of a defensive midfielder, but neither of Tielemans’ class.

Santos represents a very different case, and not merely because they will scarcely intend to replicate Chelsea’s season, whether in the fractiousness or the 10th-place finish. The damning interpretation is that United have signed the third-choice midfielder from a mid-table team, even if the pair ahead of the Brazilian, Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo, are two of the £100m brigade.

Manchester United are hopeful

can fulfil his potential (PA Archive)

Santos only started 13 league games last season but United noted his high pass completion rate and the fact he completed the most progressive passes per 90 minutes of any midfielder under 22 in the

Premier League

last season. He has potential, but the fee still feels high.

And even with the addition of Tielemans, it could look as

though United still have not replaced Casemiro.

The Belgian, like Kobbie Mainoo, is more of a player to partner the defensive midfielder rather than to be it. It may leave the inexperienced Santos as an automatic choice by default.

Casemiro has perhaps still not yet been properly replaced (PA)

But United have not ruled out going back in for Ederson. Maybe getting two relatively cheap additions leaves money in the kitty. Certainly, even with two central midfielders arriving, there looks a need for a third.

And while their top targets are going elsewhere, the danger is that the overhaul United long envisaged and which may have been planned around Tchouameni, Anderson and Fernandes ends up with compromise choices and with lesser options in the centre of the pitch than some of their rivals. Theirs doesn’t look a midfield of the standard of Arsenal’s or City’s.

Maybe Tottenham’s costlier makeover will give them more quality.

Michael Carrick will begin his permanent tenure at

with a new-look midfield (PA Wire)

But Carrick’s dozen years and 464 games in the United midfield ought to give him an idea what the job entails. The challenge for Tielemans, Santos and any future additions will be not just to impress their manager, but to prove worthy successors to him.

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