Manchester United close in on Perisic and Dier, ditch Jones and Smalling

Useless, brainless defenders Phil Jones and Chris Smalling might finally be somebody else’s problem and our advantage. Mr Tony Pulis, West Brom’s manager, is interested in taking both of them from Manchester United. There’s no mention of a fee, but we can only hope that United don’t have to pay West Brom to take them off our hands. Imagine, soon people won’t have to pretend that Smalling was really any better under Louis van Gaal’s system.

A lot of transfer news in just one story. Useless, brainless Ed Woodward will not be at the United summer tour, for now at least. He’s going to take his best couple of taste buds, re-purpose them as best he can into thought-processing cells, and offer Inter Milan and Spurs £50m each for Ivan Perisic and Eric Dier, respectively. Jose Mourinho would be better served by speaking to a Russian agent about forcing Woodward out of the door.

As well as that, Adnan Januzaj is going to waste his talent at Real Sociedad, who will pay £9.8m for the privilege of looking at him every week and saying, “Hang on, weren’t you good a few years ago?”

It had looked increasingly likely for a while, and despite interest from LA Galaxy, United are going to offer Zlatan Ibrahimovic the chance to remain at United once he attains full fitness. He has been making exceptional progress, apparently, with his knee injury, and Mourinho is going to give him the chance to have one more season at Old Trafford. Hooray!

And on ESPNFC, there’s one bit of good news, and another of bad. The bad: Inter Milan want Nemanja Matic, potentially scuppering any deal that United had planned if the move for Dier fails. The good: West Ham want Joe Hart, and we can rest easy that he won’t be wearing a United shirt any time soon. I hope.