It’s like Groundhog Day, isn’t it, with Manchester United’s usual transfer debacle? 

To be honest, it’s quite draining, and it seems to me that there are some departments of the club that enjoy generating the clicks for their social media presence, and the drama that comes with it. It helps to highlight the club globally – and if you’ve heard anyone from those departments talking about search engines and traffic, you know what I’m getting at. 

It feels like it’s more of a business than a football club and presence online is preferred at the expense of getting transfers in early to help them settle. It also feels as if the club play the game with that as well, they’re happy for rumours to escalate as that helps relevance. That’s how it feels, anyway.

And the longer it goes on you have to have a concern that it’s a money-saving tactic. The issue is when more and more players leave without getting adequately replaced. Ole’s done well, by and large, with the players he’s brought in, but the sheer number of players we’ve lost need to be replaced from somewhere.

Jadon Sancho, even if he did come, is only one player, not the five or six that we seem short of. That’s dragging on and it feels like we’re better off waiting for another year for him and concentrating on alternatives and priorities. So, what about Adama Traore, or Jack Grealish? These are possibly cheaper options that we could get in the door and then add one or two.

That’s the hope. I won’t hold my breath. Particularly as it seems as if centre-back doesn’t look like the emergency everyone else seems to think it is. We have so many on the books and it doesn’t look as if any of them are going to get moved on.

There is some talk about Jesse Lingard and Andreas Pereira moving on but the closer the new season comes – just four weeks now – the more likely it is these players will be kept and then probably even given new contracts. Nobody is going to pay the wages that our squad fillers are on and that leaves us in a difficult situation.

We’ve seen Manchester City and Chelsea do some business and just looking at United’s new shirt and ticket prices, they haven’t come down to reflect the current financial climate, so it will be difficult to stomach if the club uses that as an excuse. 

It would anger fans because the Glazers have had their cake and ate it for a long time but to do it at such a critical time now, after qualifying for the Champions League, it’s going to make a mockery of the idea of a proper rebuild, and make us wonder why so much emphasis was placed on us getting there.

So to this weekend and Ole’s third semi-final of the season. Hopefully third time lucky. It will be a tough one as Sevilla are so technically good. They look comfortable and well-drilled. If United’s main men turn up then we should have a very good chance. The pressure is on again so let’s hope that Bruno Fernandes, Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial stand up as they have done in the more crucial games of late.