Man United stuck with £107m of unsellable players as Shaw, Maguire and Martinez near exits

Manchester United are carrying £107.5m worth of players they cannot shift, according to Transfermarkt valuations, as the club prepares for a summer squad clearout that looks far more complicated than their decision-makers may have hoped.

Marcus Rashford, Patrick Dorgu, Joshua Zirkzee, Manuel Ugarte and Noussair Mazraoui make up the quintet at the centre of United’s recruitment headache. Rashford, valued at £29.4m, returned to Old Trafford earlier this year largely because no club was willing to absorb his wages. Zirkzee, valued at £16.8m, has attracted no takers despite United reportedly setting a £30m asking price — a figure that appears increasingly unrealistic. Dorgu (£29.4m) and Mazraoui (£15.1m) have not been outright failures but have failed to justify their places in a squad that needs significant improvement, while Ugarte (£16.8m) would have been moved on last summer had he not suffered a World Cup injury.

The problem is compounded by three senior players who are set to walk away for nothing. Luke Shaw’s contract expires at the end of the season and is widely expected to be his last at the club, having outlasted a string of managers. Harry Maguire holds a clause that could extend his deal by a further year, but there is little appetite on either side to activate it. Lisandro Martinez, meanwhile, has made his own feelings clear with a recent public outburst directed at the club, and United are unlikely to stand in his way when his contract concludes.

The situation was debated on talkSPORT this week, with presenter Jeff Stelling questioning who would realistically sign any of the five unsellable names, while co-host Ally McCoist agreed that Shaw, Maguire and Martinez would almost certainly depart.

United’s hierarchy has at least acknowledged that the squad, rather than the manager, represents the club’s most pressing structural problem — a shift in thinking that led to Michael Carrick being given more time to stabilise results. But changing a squad is a far slower and more expensive process than changing a coach, and the numbers suggest United face a summer of difficult negotiations, significant write-downs, and the prospect of losing experienced players on free transfers with nothing to show for it.