Manchester United look ready to splash the cash on another player who won’t fix the problems laid bare by a highly disappointing season. According to a number of media outlets in England, Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Ed Woodward are close to landing Aston Villa’s young, attacking midfielder Jack Grealish in a £60 million deal this summer.
Grealish has been long heralded as a future star, despite still waiting to make his international debut for England and yet to play a full season at the top level, but that’s the English media for you. If you are to believe The Sun newspaper in England (and here’s a hint… you shouldn’t) Grealish is turning down moves to both Barcelona and Real Madrid to make the switch to Old Trafford. Unlikely.
Grealish also comes with a reputation as a ‘bad boy’ having been pictured in 2015 passed out on the ground after a hard night of partying in Tenerife and in 2016 he was fined £50,000 by then Villa boss Roberto Di Matteo for an early hours hotel rendezvous that only finished when police were called to kick him and his party out. Since then, Grealish seems to have learnt his lesson and kept his nose clean.
With seven goals this season and five assists it’s no wonder clubs higher up the table are sniffing around the 24 year old, but with Daniel James, Marcus Rashford, Mason Greenwood and Anthony Martial, United aren’t exactly lacking talent up front, just consistency. Add to that the recent signing of Bruno Fernandes from Sporting Lisbon and it’s a pretty formidable attack, on their day.
What they are missing is someone who can break up the play, win the ball and distribute to the attacking players further up the pitch. Scott McTominay was doing a great job of this before his injury, but the young Scottish international needs help. Someone like Wilfred Ndidi of Leicester City would be ideal.
A no nonsense midfielder who breaks up play and moves the ball in the right direction. It’s no surprise that Leicester, with Ndidi, have kept eight clean sheets this season, fourth best in the league, while United are in the bottom half with only five. He’s not the player everyone is talking about week in, week out, but is playing a similar role to that of N’golo Kante when Leicester won the Premier League in 2016.
Donny Van De Beek of Ajax is another name mentioned as a possible target for United who could better suit what the team needs. Van De Beek seems to be the last of the highly rated young triad to leave the Johan Cruijff Arena after Matthijs de Ligt and Frenkie de Jong left for Juventus and Barcelona respectively last summer. Unfortunately for Solskjær a deal taking him to Real Madrid in the summer seems all but done. However, maybe former United favorite, and current General Director at Ajax, Edwin Van Der Sar can convince him otherwise and sell him on Manchester. It’s a big ask but weirder things have happened.
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Buying Grealish seems like Solskjær and the higher ups refusing to acknowledge the real problems surrounding the club and believe me there are a lot of them. Hoping you can out score the opposition is not going to get you back to challenging for titles and United deep down know this. Why they then continue to ignore what everyone else knows is baffling. ‘Defense wins Championships’ and right now United’s are not good enough. Grealish won’t fix that problem.
