Man Utd could have agreed deal for £70m forward

Manchester United have been busy during this summer’s transfer window with the signings of Daniel James and Aaron Wan-Bissaka.

According to several other reports, we could land Harry Maguire from Leicester City in the coming days. On top of that, we’re reportedly in discussions with several other players too.

One of those is Lille forward Nicolas Pepe, who is coming off of a breakthrough season in France’s Ligue 1.

Now that the 24-year-old is back from a disappointing performance in Egpyt with the Ivory Coast at the African Cup of Nations, the forward can now negotiate a transfer ahead of the start of the 2019-20 season.

And French outlet La Voix du Nord reported on Thursday that we are one of four clubs in negotiations with Pepe. The others being Napoli, Internazionale and Liverpool.

This report is more recent than the Times when they reported last weekend that we had advanced in our negotiations with Lille for their star player. They claim it will be a £70 million deal, which is similar to La Voix du Nord, who report an €80 million transfer fee. The French outlet also reports that Nicolas Pepe would be looking for an annual salary around €5 million (£4.5m), which, again, I would not expect to be a stumbling block for us.

Nicolas Pepe scored 22 goals and assisted 11 more in 38 Ligue 1 appearances (37 starts) down the right wing last season. He is quick and an excellent runner with the ball. He’s got a good long-range shot on him and good at creating chances too. Last season both Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer used several players down the right wing without ever settling on one player. Whether Daniel James is the answer to that is certainly questionable, so I could understand the manager’s decision to want to buy Pepe.