Manchester United will not repeat the mistakes made over Alexis Sanchez over Paul Pogba, according to ESPN.
They report that any potential new deal for the Frenchman won’t get to the level of the £400,000-a-week contract Sanchez was on at Old Trafford.
Pogba apparently earns £270,000 every week now, and while he could expect a pay rise if he penned fresh terms, it could become too expensive.
United triggered the option in Pogba’s deal last week, meaning he is under contract until 2022.
What’s Woodward’s stance?
The report claims Ed Woodward is happy to allow Pogba to enter the final year of his contract next season if a new agreement cannot be reached.
That would leave United vulnerable in January 2022, when the Frenchman would be free to negotiate a free transfer exit ahead of time.
United are apparently relaxed about the situation.
But given the way United have operated behind the scenes in recent years, and the noise Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola has made in the past trying to get his client a move, there’s a chance the landscape won’t remain this serene.
Sensible not to break the bank
The first thing to be said is that United’s monetary stance on Pogba makes sense.
He is not playing well enough to justify United breaking the bank to keep him, and it seems the club have learned their lessons from the Sanchez saga on that score.
Keeping Pogba at the club just by throwing a lorryload of cash his way wouldn’t be good in the long run.
That said, if he isn’t going to sign a new deal, it would make more sense for United to sell him this coming summer.
Doing that would represent their best chance of getting a decent fee in return. Even then, it wouldn’t be the entirety of his real value because of his dwindling contract.
At Tottenham, allowing Christian Eriksen’s deal to lapse into its final year created a sideshow which went on for months. For Pogba, at United, the furore would be louder and wilder.
That is a situation Woodward should be keen to avoid, as well as the prospect of seeing a World Cup winner leave on the cheap, or for free.
There is logic to not breaking the bank to keep Pogba. There is less in letting his contract dwindle, lessening his market value and increasing the chatter over his future.
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