Sanchez handed prison sentence for tax fraud

The club's latest financial results, which were released on Friday (AEDT), show a four per cent revenue increase to $A293 million, giving them an adjusted projected revenue of $A1 billion for 2018.

The loss in the latter part of last year was down to changes in corporate tax rates in the United States, which were passed by Donald Trump's administration.

"As a result, the current quarter expense includes a non-cash tax accounting write off of £48.8million," United said in their official release.

Executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward said: "Our solid business model has allowed us to invest in the future of the club with the extension of Jose Mourinho's contract as manager and the acquisition of Alexis Sanchez.

"We look forward to the remainder of the season with confidence."

Sanchez's January arrival, which took place too late to be recorded in the figures, saw United set records for shirt sales and social media interactions, according to Woodward.

"Alexis Sanchez has set a new January signing record in terms of shirt sales, three times the previous record," Woodward told a conference call with investors.

He said the Sanchez deal, which saw Henrikh Mkhitaryan move to Arsenal, "generated some interesting social media stats".

"It was the biggest United post on Instagram with two million likes and comments, the most shared United Facebook post ever, the most retweeted United post ever, and the hashtag #Alexis7 was the number one trending topic on Twitter worldwide," he explained.

"To put that into context, the announcement posts generated 75 per cent more interactions than the announcement of the sale of the world's most-expensive player last summer when Neymar moved from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain."