MNN Hub
After taking well over a month to sign Bryan Mbeumo, Manchester United are continuing their one-iron-in-the-transfer-fire approach by putting all of their efforts into signing a new No.9 this summer.
Benjamin Sesko is the man they want and we can safely assume a first formal bid – if and when it arrives – will fall short of the mark, like the second formal bid, and maybe even a third, before Sir Jim Ratcliffe holds his hands up and pays the piper.
Either that or Sesko chooses Newcastle, which will be absolutely fine by Ruben Amorim, who has become perhaps the greatest-ever purveyor of the This Is Manchester United call to arms, despite being – or perhaps because he is – the worst Manchester United manager in the Premier League era.
After a harrowing first season and with so-called ‘bad eggs’ either moving to Barcelona or currently training away from the rest of the squad while seeking an exit, Amorim has set his sights on footballers with a genuine love for Manchester United.
By all accounts he’s found that deep-seated adoration in Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo, to whom he offered telling, on-brand advice before they decided to make their dream moves .
“In the meetings with Bryan, with Cunha, we said that. Don’t go to a club because of the manager. Go because of the idea of the club. And they are here because of the idea of the club.”
It’s a non-negotiable he’s stayed true to throughout the transfer window having made the vow before the end of last season when asked about a possible approach for Viktor Gyokeres: “We want players who want to represent United, not players who want to play certain competitions.”
It’s a requirement of any aspiring United player which nearly cost Amorim the signing of Mbeumo, and may well have resulted in the club paying over the odds for the 25-year-old, with Brentford not at all happy that they approached him before them.
But with innumerable post-Sir Alex Ferguson signings seeing a move to Old Trafford as a means to a hefty pay cheque and as their final destination in the worst possible ‘f*** it, I’ve made it’ sort of way, bringing about a whole club malaise that’s seen them plumb extraordinarily low depths, Amorim has quite rightly identified hunger as the key trait in new signings beyond them being excellent at football. If only it didn’t then take so bleeding long to sign them.
We’re aware that a football club that “would have been bust by Christmas” had it not been for the lunch-denying, ticket price-increasing, redundancy king isn’t flush enough to be making offers for multiple players in multiple positions at the same time, but this linear approach to a transfer window has already cost Amorim the chance of a pre-season with a new striker, and threatens to leave him without another much-needed addition when the season starts in less than two weeks.
They clearly have and have had the funds to sign all of Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Sesko, so why not look to sign them at the same time rather than waiting for one to be confirmed before moving onto the next? It’s like a toddler eating a meal from highest-value item to lowest. Don’t forget the central midfield broccoli, guys.
Omar Berrada promised in June to “do our best to do more signings quickly”, adding that “when you’re not quick it’s because you’re negotiating and you’re trying to make sure you get the right value for money”.
MORE ON MAN UTD ON F365
👉 Man Utd star performs summer transfer U-turn as his former coach ‘wants’ to reunite him with Ronaldo
👉 Man Utd, Newcastle target Sesko ‘chooses new club’ but three ‘alarm bells’ ring
👉 Man Utd set low asking price for Rasmus Hojlund as Dane rejects Benjamin Sesko swap deal
So far they’ve met Cunha’s £62.5m release clause, took 44 days between first contact with Mbeumo and paying Brentford £17m over his market value to sign him, and are currently waiting to either pay the €80m Leipzig want on the terms they set for Sesko or walking away from a deal for a player who’s certainly now the club’s top target if not necessarily Amorim’s – he’s keen on Ollie Watkins – before presumably making a late-window dash to sign a central midfielder.
Because let’s be absolutely clear – Amorim really needs a new central midfielder. He’s walking into a season knowing that none of his current possible pairings will work. Fabrizio Romano has revealed they dropped their not-so-secret interest in Joao Palhinha as Amorim decided he wanted a “less holding defensive midfielder – still defensive but with more intensity in their vision”.
They don’t have that guy, and although they’ve been linked with Sporting’s Morten Hjulmand and Valencia’s Javi Guerra while ignoring the midfielder Romano is essentially describing there in Douglas Luiz, judging by the strategy of the transfer window thus far, United won’t even have made contact with a preferred option, let alone asked for the requisite pictures of them in a Cristiano Ronaldo shirt as a ten-year-old before initiating club-to-club talks.
Amorim is to blame for the Sesko hold-up in so much as United are waiting for the striker to ‘commit’ to them over Newcastle before making a bid. But that in no way stops his bosses from multi-tasking. A lack of funds may do, but amid claims throughout the window that United must sell before they buy, they’ve sold precisely no-one and yet are prepared to take their spending to well over £200m if they get the green light from Sesko.
The transfer window will be a success if United sign a striker and midfielder thanks to Amorim’s hard-and-fast rule on those new signings, but the start to his second season has been hamstrung by the club’s apparent inability to negotiate two signings at the same time.
Source: Football365.com | Continue to Full Story…
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings