SPORT: Football
Cristiano Ronaldo will leave Manchester United in the summer if the club do not qualify for the Champions League.

Accord­ing to The Sun, there have been talks this week between Ronaldo’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Richard Arnold who will become the club’s new Chief Exec­u­tive at the start of next month.

The Ronal­do camp are con­cerned at the way the club is going with the team cur­rent­ly stand­ing in sev­enth place in the Pre­mier League.

Ronal­do, who is 37 next month, is intent on con­tin­u­ing play­ing until he is 40 but wants to end his career as a win­ner and right now there is lit­tle chance of that hap­pen­ing at United.

The Por­tuguese goalscor­ing leg­end returned to the club at the start of the sea­son on a two-year con­tract in the belief that Unit­ed had a squad to chal­lenge for major honours.

But the dream come­back has turned into a night­mare with the Red Dev­ils lan­guish­ing in the Europe Con­fer­ence League spot in the table.

Last week he hit out in an explo­sive inter­view about the atti­tude with­in the Unit­ed camp.

He also sug­gest­ed that some of the younger play­ers at the club were not pre­pared to lis­ten to advice from more expe­ri­enced pros like himself.

The five-time Cham­pi­ons League win­ner has been shocked at the lack of inten­si­ty at Car­ring­ton com­pared to what he was used to dur­ing his time at Unit­ed between 2003 and 2009 before he left for Real Madrid and then Juventus.

It has led to him becom­ing a frus­trat­ed and aloof fig­ure at the club.

Mean­while, cliques have emerged with­in the squad con­tribut­ing to dis­joint­ed per­for­mances on the pitch.
The Red Dev­ils have won just three of their last sev­en games.

They are 24 points off league lead­ers Man­ches­ter City hav­ing start­ed the sea­son with real belief they could chal­lenge for the title.

Since then Ole Gun­nar Sol­sk­jaer has been sacked and new boss Ralf Rang­nick has been unable to arrest the club’s alarm­ing dip in form as they trav­el to face new­ly-pro­mot­ed Brent­ford tonight.

The Red Dev­ils sur­ren­dered a 2–0 lead away to Aston Vil­la on Sat­ur­day con­ced­ing twice in the final 13 min­utes of nor­mal time.

Ronal­do has missed the last two games through injury but is expect­ed to be fit to play tonight.