Manchester United to sign Ander Herrera in January

Manchester United will attempt to sign Ander Herrera in January, according to the Daily Mirror.

In a very revealing report on United's Herrera move, The Mirror claims that the club's lack of research over the complexity of the deal meant that the quick nature of the transfer would have opened the club up to a multitude of hidden costs, as well as finding the entire fee up front, which the club were not prepared to do.

In fact, the report says 'even a club of United's size', although we may prefer the words 'incompetence', 'tight-fistedness', or 'cluelessness' instead of size, could not afford to simply write what would effectively be a blank cheque.

It's still a huge disaster from the club's perspective, and getting Herrera to fit in in January will be more difficult. Interestingly, while there have been some report that the player's clause extends to €40m in the January window, the Mirror makes no mention of this. It is an unusual clause if true, so maybe the reports of that are erroneous.

Interestingly, the paper confirms that Herrera did not simply reduce his demands to facilitate the deal but accepted an actual wage cut, in real terms (after tax.) He must've been absolutely dying to play for us, which puts a really sour feeling over the whole thing. In short, if we don't turn up with the money in January, then we'll have really behaved like terrible people over this. Hopefully we can reclaim some of our dignity if we do.