Manchester United to offer Jesse Lingard and £45 million to Leicester City for James Maddison

Leicester City head coach Brendan Rodgers was pretty adamant when he told everyone that James Maddison wouldn’t be leaving in the January transfer window. “Nobody will leave here that we don’t want to go,” he told a press conference on Friday.

Apparently, Manchester United didn’t listen and are preparing to offer £45 million plus Jesse Lingard in order to sign Maddison this month as the midfield situation grows worse, with Paul Pogba and Scott McTominay out weeks with injuries.

Reports from The Mirror claim that United are preparing to offer £5 million over their £40 million valuation for Maddison to hopefully entice Leicester into a mid-season transfer.

United are prepared to almost triple Maddison’s current £55,000-a-week wage and put the former Coventry star on a whopping £150,000-a-week salary. If Maddison were to decide to stay with the Foxes and ask for the same amount of money United is alleged to be offering, Leicester would have to make Maddison their highest-paid player above top earner Jamie Vardy on £140,000-a-week and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel on a £130,000-a-week salary.

But any potential swoop may be entirely reliant on whether United can achieve Champions League football this season. With Leicester in an automatic Champions League qualification spot, Maddison could be tempted to stay with the Foxes another year as he looks more and more likely to be playing in Europe next year.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out since Leicester City’s stance is that a sale is out of the question, while an increasingly desperate United may be prepared to throw around a staggering amount of money.