According to TeamTalk, Manchester United are keen to offer Villareal a player-plus-cash deal for Pau Torres.
United’s interest in Torres has been discussed before, but they are unwilling to pay the £60m release clause.
United are in a dire need of a center-back. Solskjaer’s only reliable options are Victor Lindelof and Harry Maguire. Both Axel Tuanzebe and Eric Bailly are injury concerns. Phil Jones and Marco Rojo are not in the club’s future plans. The only option left is Teden Mengi who’s too inexperienced to be relied on.
TeamTalk also mentions that singing a new defender is on top of United’s priority list.
Eric Bailly joined Manchester United in the summer of 2016 for a reported transfer fee of £30m. Since he joined, he’s missed more than 360 days of football.
This is Bailly’s 5th season at Old Trafford and he has made only 89 appearances in the red shirt. He played four games this season before picking a muscle injury in October. He’s missed nine games so far and there’s no expected date he could be back on the pitch.
His contract expires in 2022. It’s highly improbable that United will offer him an extension. Its the right time to look for potential buyers, get the wages off the books and get some value out of a player that’s too much of an injury risk to be relied upon throughout the season.
United are hoping that offering Bailly as a make-weight will get Villareal to reduce their asking price for Torres. £60m for a 23-year-old defender is too much, but half of that plus Bailly might just do the trick.
However, it’s unlikely that Villareal will accept any such deal, so United are going to have to keep looking for a way to offload players before they can buy new ones.
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