It seems that every summer there is a messy and painful transfer saga that drags on throughout the course of the window. It usually involves Manchester United. Two summers of wrangling with Borussia Dortmund over Jadon Sancho and two more of trying to prise Frenkie de Jong from Barcelona are recent examples. Wesley Sneijder and Sergio Ramos are older ones. Look at how they all turned out.
Enter Viktor Gyokeres. It appeared to be a no-brainer for United; a lethal 54-goal striker, protégé of United boss Ruben Amorim, with a gentleman’s agreement to leave Sporting CP for €60m (£51m) + €10m in bonuses, and United seemingly having a free run at him. Slam dunk.
But it is never that simple, is it? Arsenal suddenly turn their attentions to him after flirting with RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko; Sporting’s president Frederico Varandas reneges on the gentleman’s agreement and starts asking for €80 million instead of €60m, Juventus enter the fray and lodge a €70 million bidand Gyokeres himself reportedly tells United he does not want to play for them.
United fans would normally be bracing themselves for a roller coaster summer of “will he, won’t he”, waking up every morning to click on headlines in their favourite news channel (The Peoples Person, of course) to feed off the latest chapter in the saga.
However, this year is different. The club is now being run by INEOS. This is not Ed Woodward or Richard Arnold. This is Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox, men who understand the football world. While staying informed, they have not even lodged a bid for Gyokeres, they have taken a step back, and rightly so. It is Arsenal, not United, who find themselves trapped in the spider’s web this summer.
It is not that United wouldn’t love to sign the deadly Swede. For once, they are one step ahead of the game. They have known for months that this was shaping up to be the sh-t show of the summer.
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