This article is part of Football FanCast’s Transfer Focus series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent transfer news…
According to Spanish publication El Desmarque, Manchester United are planning on making a bid for Tottenham midfielder Christian Eriksen in the upcoming January transfer window.
What’s the word?
The Denmark international has been the subject of intense transfer speculation for a number of months now, with reports back in the summer suggesting Manchester United had ended their late interest in the play-maker because they felt he had his heart set on a move to Real Madrid.
However, El Desmarque (via The Daily Mirror) now claim the Red Devils are preparing to make a £42m bid for the 27-year-old after holding talks with him last month. The report adds Eriksen has supposedly grown wearisome of waiting for Madrid to make an offer for him, and has therefore started the negotiation process with United.
Foolishness
Even just a few months ago, a move for Eriksen would have sounded like a great piece of business for United. The Dane had come off the back of a season in which he scored ten goals and racked up a further 17 assists across all competitions. But fast forward a months, and the 27-year-old is producing nowhere near the kind of form that should be enticing the Red Devils to make a bid for him.
This campaign, he has managed a measly two goals and one assist in 14 games, whilst as per Whoscored, his shots (1.5), key passes (1.4) and average passes (36.5) per game have taken a sharp decline from last year. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side have already been burned once before by making a move for a proven Premier League star with his contract running down. Alexis Sanchez anyone? The ex-Arsenal man arrived at Old Trafford in a high-profile deal back in January 2018, only to leave the club more than a year-and-a-half later with just five goals to his name.
United would therefore simply be making a foolish mistake by letting history repeat itself in the form of a winter swoop for Eriksen.
