Bad squad harmony after selling a player

Club captain is unhappy about me selling a player and this has negatively affected the squad harmony

How can I improve the squad harmony? How can I fix this? Is it too late?

I'm playing a Man Utd save currently in the second half of the first season

I've sold my 2nd choice keeper Victor Valdes to Sevilla for £8mil. as I thought he was just soaking up wages and it was a waste of talent to be warming the Old Trafford's bench

Rooney became unhappy and moaned

Whole squad reacted badly to this

Team harmony is bad, 1% on the graph, was 0% before

Board is not happy about this

I've promised to the board I will sort this out

I've also promised to Rooney that I will strengthen the squad, I've got Pantilimon on a tiny wage as a back up to cover De Gea and two midfielders on loan Oliver and Cheryshev just to add more depth to our squad in the January transfer window. This however did not improve the squad harmony and Rooney wasn't happy enough either.

The overall squad harmony is still on 0% according to the graph

The individual players' morale ranges from Okay to Fairly good

80% of the players think that Rooney is right that Victor Valdes shouldn't have been sold.

I can no longer talk to Rooney - On his "Happiness" tab it says "Asked to leave" should I sell him? Will this make things even worse? or Is Rooney the problem?

I wanted to keep him because he meant something to the club but considering his personality and what's going on now I regret not selling him let alone choosing him as a club captain!

My contract is due to be renewed soon and I'm afraid Rooney's reactions will have me sacked come end of the season since most players in the team valued him greatly

I have a few months left to fix this.

Thoughts?

Any suggestions?

Edit notes:

- added a picture showing players' happiness

imo Rooney is far more trouble than he's worth, selling him might solve the current issue but getting rid of a highly paid player who is likely in the early stages of declining ability is easy said than done.

Out of interest how did the conversation with him play out? Not much you can do now but learning where you might have gone wring with the way you approached the conversation will help you avoid this in the future.

Have you been able to hold a meeting with the rest of the team to see if you can get them back on your side?

tell them you will be replacing him with a better play and follow up on your word

Let some time go by. Give Pantillimon some time to play. If you can, call a meeting.

Updates:

Details below in small font for anyone interested:

To make things worse Rooney broke his leg and is out for 4 months! Coincidence or karma?

Mata broke his ankle and is out for 3 months - losing a key player - not fun

Few weeks later we have managed some great results beating Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final, Arsenal & Liverpool in the league all three games one after another! - best part of the season and we needed that so badly (especially me if I wanted to keep the job)

After those three wins the Squad morale has improved and raised back to better things. Crazy to win those big games without 2 key players!

Now only 3 players are concerned about the squad harmony.

Also Rooney has became a lot happier in the media saying he is going to stay. (If I don't sell him that is )

Important to point out that I have changed the focus of the general training to "Team cohesion" which should hopefully help improving the harmony within the squad

The board approached me with contract renewal!

Contract signed, looking good!

Things have improved a lot, "unbelievable Jeff"

Winning big games helped to improve the squad harmony for sure as well as focusing on "Team cohesion" in training

De Gea has won the Golden Glove award which he dedicated to me How nice of him

We have also won the FA Cup

So overall it was a massive turn around at the end of the season I thought I will get the boot honestly but things have improved thankfully.

tl;dr: SOLVED

- Win games, winning big games helped especially

- focus on team cohesion in general team training training

- don't declare interest in players you'd like to buy to the media

- be positive, back up your players and show faith in your players in the press conferences

- stick to the same starting 11 as much as possible at least until the squad atmosphere improves

Result: squad harmony has gone from 0% to 71% over the course of few months. Now players are no longer concerned and Rooney is happy to stay.

Winning games, being positive and supportive about your team in the press conferences helps

give it a few weeks, win games and pray for the best