Manchester United end pursuit of Paulo Dybala

Manchester United and Ed Woodward are realizing they can’t buy love and, according to The Telegraph’s James Ducker, are calling off their pursuit of Juventus’ Paulo Dybala.

The newest transfer saga to end with supporters’ tears and furious members in the dressing room; Dybala is reported to have asked for exorbitant amounts of money to send the message to United that he wasn’t looking to leave the Old Lady, and there has also been no further word on Mario Mandžukić’s reported move to Old Trafford.

Of course, the cancelled pursuit of Dybala marks a potential new era of United’s leadership realizing it needs to only sign players that absolutely want to play for the club, and not repeat another disastrous player swap, a la Alexis Sánchez.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who clearly has been blasting Young the Giant’s “Superposition” all summer, has stated that he only wants players that want to be Manchester United players.

However, Woodward and co. find themselves in the unenviable position of trying to recover from another embarrassing transfer saga. Over the weekend, Romelu Lukaku -- the straw making the Dybala deal stir -- decided it was appropriate to torpedo his value as an in-his-prime 26-year-old striker by posting confidential team information on Twitter whilst taking the piss out of Manchester United’s 2018-19 player of the year, Luke Shaw.

Ducker, in the same report, states that United are still looking for suitors for Lukaku, but, with Lukaku’s recent social media buffoonery that surely is worse than anything Paul Pogba or Jesse Lingard have posted, it might prove difficult to offload the Belgian striker in the waning days of the summer transfer window.

And for all the readers that don’t have push notifications on their phones and are finding out all of today’s transfer news through this story, don’t worry, it gets worse. The BBC’s Simon Stone decided to take the remaining air out of supporters’ balloons by tweeting the news that Sporting CP’s Bruno Fernandes is unlikely to make a move to Old Trafford after an entire summer of reports to the contrary.

At least Harry Maguire’s big dumb head will probably score more goals than Dybala and Fernandes, right?