Manchester United interim manager, Ralf Rangnick, has revealed some of the players the club’s board refused to sign in the January window.
The Red Devils allowed Anthony Martial to join Sevilla on loan in January.
Mason Greenwood was then suspended indefinitely by the club with just three days left of the transfer window.
Rangnick was hoping United might act quickly to bolster the squad before deadline day and mentioned Liverpool forward Luis Diaz, who has been a revelation since arriving from Porto on January 30, as one of the potential solutions along with Dusan Vlahovic, signed by Juventus, and Julian Alvarez, who will join Manchester City this summer.
Instead United failed to act and have been almost entirely reliant on Cristiano Ronaldo as a source of goals, with injury limiting Edinson Cavani to just six appearances this year.
Rangnick’s side have scored just 13 in their last 10 league matches, nine of them from Ronaldo.
“The answer at the time was no there was no player on the market that could really help us – there were a few, Diaz who is now at Liverpool, Alvarez who will be at Manchester City in the summer, Vlahovic who at the time still was with Fiorentina those are just three of them that come across my mind now,” said Rangnick.
“We had four days off at the time and on the Sunday I was informed about the issues with Mason Greenwood and obviously Anthony Martial had already left and then I was aware that within four days we had some strikers missing and it might make sense, we were still in three competitions – Champions League, FA Cup and fourth in the league but that’s the past and it doesn’t help us anymore.
“I spoke to the board and said shouldn’t we at least speak and try and analyse if we could get a player either on loan or as a permanent deal but in the end the answer was no.
“I still believe that we should have at least tried, if we would’ve found and been able in 48 hours, 48 hours is short notice but it’s still 48 hours, it might have been worth to try and internally discuss but we didn’t and it was not done.”
