Wayne Rooney and Ashley Young staying at Manchester United

Manchester United captain Wayne Rooney and winger Ashley Young will stay at the club beyond the end of the January transfer window, manager Jose Mourinho has confirmed. Both players had been linked moves away from Old Trafford but are set to remain with the 20-time English league champions.

The Manchester Evening News suggested that Rooney could be subject of a £20m move to Chinese Super League club Beijing Guoan, who are managed by former England boss Sven Goran Eriksen. In addition, Young has been linked with a host of sides from China, including Shandong Luneng, who were offering wages of £16m [The Guardian], after having made just nine appearances this season.

But Mourinho has confirmed that United will not be involved in a manic last day of the January transfer window by allowing either Rooney or Young to depart. "Ashley is staying and is selected for tomorrow," the Portuguese boss explained, according to M.E.N. "It is finished and he stays with me until the end of the season.

"Yeah [Rooney is staying at United]. We don't have players in, we don't have players out. We lost two players from the squad, you can say that Memphis Depay and Morgan Schneiderlin, they didn't play a lot, but the reality is they played some matches. When they played other people didn't, and when they played other people were rested."

But despite United's business in January having come to an end, Mourinho has already begun planning for the summer window. The 54-year-old is aware of how he needs to improve his squad for the 2017-18 campaign and says his team must keep up with the "permanent evolution" of their rivals in the Premier League.

"I know what I want, I know what I want," he added. "I always think every week the more I know my players the more I know my team, the more I know the competition, but it's a competition which is in permanent evolution and it needs permanent evolution. I know what I want. The market closed today so there is no point, especially for me, to be speaking about the next transfer window."