Manchester United to announce Alvaro Morata transfer

Manchester United have turned their attention to Borussia Dortmund's defender Marc Bartra. The central defender has impressed in his time in Germany, and as he is capable of walking in a straight line without falling over, he is already an upgrade on Chris Smalling and Phil Jones, who are worse than useless. In the same story is the suggestion that Wayne Rooney's move to Everton is 'inevitable'. We can still dream!

"Wazza" has been photographed in the publicity guff for Manchester United's new, awful kit, which some people are taking to mean that he will remain at the club. While it would possibly be a sign of something were he not included, his presence merely hedges both eventualities, that he either leaves or goes.

Alvaro Morata and his father held urgent talks with Real Madrid, according to this here. It seems like a deal will be done at some point, but the longer negotiations stall, the more United should be concerned that David de Gea is going to be involved in some way or another.

United have earned £7.5m in the transfer market by not doing anything. Having failed to sign Michael Keane from Burnley themselves, he has joined Everton for £30m. United had a 25% sell-on clause from their previous transfer, and so are entitled to enough money to pay Rooney's wages for two-thirds of a year.

And, while we have an informal ban on the Sun in this page, there is the most confident bit of news on Morata yet, from a paper with traditionally strong reporting on United. They believe that the deal to sign Morata will be announced on Thursday, before United's summer tour. That should cheer up Jose Mourinho, who has been resolutely effed off of late, with Ed Woodward's continual failure to do his job properly.