Manchester United's Transfer Ambitions: Carrick Seeks More Before Deadline

Manchester United are heading into the final two weeks of the summer window with a clear message from Michael Carrick: the squad is better, but nowhere near finished.

The club have already thrown £85 million at the midfield, bringing in Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans to reshape the centre of the pitch. It’s a serious outlay, the kind that would usually signal the bulk of a summer’s work is done. Carrick doesn’t see it that way.

“I think we've got a pretty good balance in all when you lay the squad out, but yeah, of course, we would like more,” he said, speaking about the current state of his group. “We would like more, we need to keep pushing for more. There are one or two areas where we'd like to improve and we feel that there's the possibility to improve.”

Those “one or two areas” are no secret. United want a left-back and another central midfielder before the window shuts. The search on the left has already taken them to Newcastle United’s Lewis Hall, with informal talks held with his representatives. Newcastle, though, moved quickly to shut that down, cooling any idea of an exit and forcing United to widen their net.

Arsenal youngster Myles Lewis-Skelly is one of the names under consideration, but his current valuation is viewed as too steep. United like him. They just don’t like the price.

Carrick, though, is not in the mood to hide behind balance sheets.

“Money's money. I get that. It's still about the football and that's where the competition lies,” he said. “So I think there's a balance of responsibility of this club to – and what we feel naturally as a group anyway – is to try and win games and be successful. We feel like we've got to be pushing for everything that we're involved in, understanding a little bit, being realistic of what the recent history's looked like as well, and that's over a period of time.”

The ambition in midfield underlines that stance. United lodged a fresh enquiry for Real Madrid’s Aurelien Tchouameni last month, a move that underlines the scale of their targets, even if prising the Frenchman away from the Bernabeu would be incredibly difficult. It is a long shot, but a deliberate one. Carrick wants his starting XI built to compete at the very top, not just make up the numbers.

He leans heavily on the momentum of last season, but refuses to let it become a comfort blanket.

“But then actually the confidence we've taken from the last few months, and what we kind of achieved in the league,” he said. “So there's a lot that goes into that, but certainly the situation is what it is as well, whether that's finances or whatever. For now, we've got to make the most of it, but we've got to keep pushing, really, and push everything in every boundary that we can to be able to win again, basically.

“And that's the challenge at the end of the day, whether that's this season or hopefully the one after. It needs to be, I say it needs to be, we want it to be as soon as possible, and that's what we're all aiming for.”

Around them, the landscape is unforgiving. United are the only member of the traditional “Big Six” yet to break the £100m barrier on a single marquee signing. Every rival has gone big: Manchester City have landed Elliot Anderson, Tottenham have brought in Sandro Tonali, Chelsea have gone heavy on Morgan Rogers. The arms race at the top end of the Premier League has not slowed. If anything, it has accelerated.

United’s response so far has been targeted rather than explosive. Santos and Tielemans strengthen the core. More is wanted out wide and in the middle. The urgency is clear, because the stakes are.

Last season’s third-place finish dragged the club back into the Champions League and gave Carrick proof that his ideas can translate over a full campaign. That progress now has to be protected – and then pushed on.

The new Premier League season starts with an away trip to Hull City on August 22. By then, Carrick will hope his squad looks closer to the version he keeps talking about: one that isn’t just chasing the pack, but ready to stand alongside it.