Man United have free transfer solution to left-back problem – but there’s just one small ‘catch’ | OneFootball

It’s Transfer Deadline Day +2 and that brings with it the start of a shift from headlines pretending that outgoings from Premier League clubs to places where the window remains open constitute ‘late deals’ to pretending that everyone is about to have a go on the Great Free Agent Lucky Dip.

We’ve even reached the point where it’s no longer necessary to pretend it’s this season’s Great Free Agent Lucky Dip, because who cares what happens after they’ve clicked on the headline yeah?

It’s tiring stuff.

Catch and release Sensational bit of guff from the Daily Express here as transfer tales refuse to go quietly into the night despite the window having SLAMMED SHUT two days ago.

Yes, ‘catch’ is certainly one word for what the Express eventually grudgingly get around to admitting over 200 words into their story:

You have to grudgingly say that’s magnificent. Just to be absolutely clear, there is not one line in this story that suggests Man United will do this, or even any links suggesting they are thinking about doing this. Just that they could do this. Next year.

And that’s enough, apparently. The fact that Manchester United, in common with literally every other football club on earth, could potentially sign Federico Dimarco on a free next summer is enough to concoct this whole story and, crucially, sit it underneath that headline.

A headline brazenly and unapologetically designed to look like it’s something else entirely, something far more urgent. Something that suggests a fix for the problem United face right now. It’s a clear attempt to tap in to the one remaining route to bringing in a player now the window has shut; by dipping into the massive mixed bag of free agents.

A clear ruse to play on United fans’ concerns about the lack of defensive cover they have right now, not what the situation might hypothetically look like 12 months from now.

For what it’s worth there’s a genuinely magnificent crop of free agents technically available to be scooped up this summer. There’s a Paul Pogba there if you want him, guys? Guys? No? Okay, can we interest you in a lightly used Tanguy Ndombele?

But there’s a significant dearth of left-back options. Even the Express have stopped short of pretending United might make a move for the injured Oleksandr Zinchenko.

So how to still come up with a story hinting that a magic solution to what looks like a high-risk reliance on Luke Shaw’s form and fitness for the next four months might exist?

Why, simply see who the best left-back who’ll be out of contract next summer might be. Doesn’t matter if the story itself is pure, distilled bumgravy, does it? Nobody’s going to read that. As long as you’ve got them in with the headline, it’s all good.

What a game this is.

The ‘late signing’ jetting in for a medical is 17-year-old Georgian winger Andria Bartishvili, who ‘has been hailed as the next Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’ because of course he has, and who won’t in any case link up with Arsenal until he turns 18 next year.

He, you will be startled to learn, is not in fact a £60m transfer. More in the region of £4m, it says here.

The £60m man is, of course, Gabriel Martinelli, whose drawn-out move to Al-Hilal is proving a massive boon to tabloid headline writers in those barren post-deadline days.

Every silver lining has a cloud We very much enjoy this glass-half-full approach to Chelsea’s reduced midfield stocks from football.london

The millions-saving plan? Simply promote a kid or two from the academy into the first-team squad to replace the World Cup winner you just sold for £125m.

Chelsea, and indeed all these other clubs who’ve just spent the last three months throwing all this money around for established players are going to be absolutely kicking themselves when they discover they could have just saved all those millions with this foolproof academy-kids promotion wheeze. Why didn’t anyone think of it before?