The plan was to strip more than £1m a week off Manchester United’s wage bill by moving five expensive earners out for good. Four of them left. The fifth, Rashford, is back.
Head coach Michael Carrick confirmed the reintegration ahead of a pre-season camp in Dublin.
“We have got a full squad this week in Dublin. We fly straight there and have a few days where we have the whole group back together. Marcus is part of that,” Carrick said.
Barcelona held a €26m option to sign the England forward permanently after his season-long loan and chose not to activate it during the summer window, sending Rashford back to a club that had spent the past six months trying to get him off the books.
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£163m and 70 salaries
United’s total squad wage bill sits at £163,009,080 a year, or £3,134,790 a week across a 70-player group, according to salary tracker Salary Sport. Captain Bruno Fernandes and Rashford share the top of the payroll on £300,000 a week, a figure that translates to £15.6m a year before bonuses.
Behind the two headline earners, the salary structure now looks like this:
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Bruno Fernandes: £300,000/week
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Marcus Rashford: £300,000/week
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Benjamin Sesko: £200,000/week
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Matheus Cunha: £180,000/week
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Harry Maguire: £170,000/week
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Mason Mount: £150,000/week
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Bryan Mbeumo: £150,000/week
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Luke Shaw: £150,000/week
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Kobbie Mainoo: £150,000/week
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Manuel Ugarte: £120,000/week
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Lisandro Martinez: £120,000/week
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Amad Diallo: £120,000/week
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Diogo Dalot: £85,000/week
The Champions League paradox
Third place in the Premier League brought United back into the Champions League for the first time in two seasons. It also detonated a clause buried across most of the squad’s contracts.
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Qualifying for the competition triggers a 25% salary bump for the majority of the squad, a mechanism that turned a sporting recovery into an accounting problem. With around £190m in outstanding transfer fees also due this year, the exits were framed inside the club as necessity rather than choice.
Four out, one back
The purge itself was ruthless.
Casemiro, the highest-paid player in the squad on £350,000 a week, left as a free agent at the end of his contract, with United declining the one-year extension option tied to Premier League appearances.
Rasmus Hojlund’s loan at Napoli became a permanent transfer worth a reported $58m once the Italian side confirmed their own Champions League place, activating the obligation-to-buy in the original loan.
Jadon Sancho was released on a free transfer in June, five years after arriving from Borussia Dortmund for £73m and after three separate loan spells. He is weighing offers from Europe, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, with several agreements in principle already on the table.
Andre Onana did not leave, but he did not stay either. The Cameroon goalkeeper rejoined Trabzonspor on a season-long loan, with the Turkish club paying a loan fee reported at up to £1.3m and covering his full salary this time. His representatives had been told in May that he was not in Carrick’s plans.
That leaves Rashford as the one high earner the club could not move. He last played for United in December 2024. He is now back in the group Carrick brought to Dublin.
Mainoo goes from £25,000 to £150,000
At the other end of the ledger, the new generation is already being paid like part of the future.
Kobbie Mainoo signed a new deal at the end of April 2026, a six-fold jump from a previous base of £25,000 a week to a reported top-end figure of £150,000. Sesko, signed to lead the line, came in on £200,000. Both figures now sit inside a wage structure that is trying to accommodate Champions League economics without the star names it was originally built around.
United open the 2026-27 Premier League season with a squad that is leaner at the top than at any point since the Casemiro-Sancho era began. It also has Rashford on its books, on the same wage he was on when he left.
