Sir Alex Ferguson will board a 12-hour flight to South Africa today, resigned to the fact that his best-laid plans will remain up in the air long after he has touched down. The Manchester United manager expects to make a long-awaited impact in the transfer market by signing Tomasz Kuszczak and Michael Carrick in the next seven days, but his summer rebuilding operation is being jeopardised by a need to balance the books, in addition to the threat of losing Cristiano Ronaldo.
United are close to securing a £3.5 million deal to sign Kuszczak, the young Poland goalkeeper, from West Bromwich Albion and also expect to agree a fee in the region of £14 million with Tottenham Hotspur for Carrick when negotiations resume next week. But neither is the A-list signing that supporters had expected with their chief domestic rivals having already made significant reinforcements.
A sense of anxiety has not been helped by revelations [as reported on the RI site] that the Glazers are looking for ways to ease interest bills by refinancing the £540 million debt taken on when they bought the club last year. There are funds in place for Ferguson to add to the squad but not enough, it seems, for him to challenge at the top end of the market.
A proposed bid to sign Torres from Atlético Madrid cannot progress until Ruud van Nistelrooy has been sold — and even then there are concerns that the Spain forward may prove out of United's range — while hopes of signing Diarra, of Lyons, or Javier Mascherano, of Corinthians, to play alongside Carrick have been put on hold indefinitely as the midfield players join the throng waiting for offers from Real Madrid.
Other candidates have included Marcos Senna, of Villarreal, and Jean Makoun, of Lille, but Ferguson is unsure of their quality. There was an inquiry about Didier Zokora, who played for Ivory Coast in the World Cup finals, but that came too late to stop him joining Tottenham from St-Etienne.