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Manchester United are "confident" of securing the transfer of Ilkay Gundogan, according to the Daily Mail.
United will have to wait until summer to acquire the Borussia Dortmund midfielder, but the club are apparently convinced that a deal can be done, despite reported interest from Real Madrid and Barcelona.
The paper repeats the strange claim that the midfielder has a release clause of £24million, which, if true, means it would be pretty easy to wrap it up now if we wanted.
Yet even if that clause doesn't exist, it has seemed as though Gundogan could be acquired with a pretty sizeable bid now. If Dortmund are prepared to let him go for a fee in the summer, then presumably they'd have their price for this window too. It would be a gamble, since he hasn't played for most of the season, but it would also mean we have far less chance of being usurped by Barcelona or Real Madrid. It would be nice to see us wrap this up now, rather than face another potential embarrassment... still, I'm sure Ed Woodward knows what he's doing.
