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In recent weeks Manchester United have made attempts to sign two men from the most exciting team in European football. Ajax rejected the English Premier League club’s offer for their young goalkeeper Andre Onana. Ajax’s teenage centre back and captain Matthijs de Ligt has made it clear that he intends to move elsewhere.

There is a certain brutal logic to United’s efforts to recruit Onana and De Ligt. Their defence is a shambles, conceding 54 goals in 38 Premier League matches (the club’s worst figure in league football for four decades), and, under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, last kept a clean sheet in February, some 16 games ago.

Ed Woodward wants United’s signings to come both youthful and with the potential to increase in value. Cameroon international Onana is 23, yet already has three seasons’ worth of experience as Ajax’s starting goalkeeper. De Ligt is 19, has just led the club he grew up at to the Eredivisie title, and is expected to develop into one of, if not the, best central defenders in the game.

Working on an annual revenue less than a seventh of United’s, Ajax have just come within 178 seconds of reaching the final of the Champions League. And done so playing the most exciting football of any of the 32 entrants to the competition proper.

In the six years since Sir Alex Ferguson retired as manager, the “commercial club” whose sports division is headquartered at Old Trafford has qualified for Europe’s premier club competition just three times. Although Solskjaer has talked a fine game since his December appointment, the Norwegian’s tactics became progressively more defensive (and ineffective) as the Manchester days grew longer.

Ajax expect to lose their centre back this summer. “De Ligt, I think will go to England or Spain,” said chief executive Van der Sar this month. And the club would welcome a bidding war between United, Manchester City, who also admire the defender, Barcelona and any other financial behemoth that fancies getting involved. They know, however, that De Ligt’s preference is to join his team-mate and close friend Frenckie de Jong in moving to Camp Nou.

United cannot sell De Ligt on a better environment to work, a more accomplished coach to work under, superior playing colleagues, or better chances of silverware. They cannot even offer him Champions League football. Their only bargaining tool is cash, and that is not in short supply at either Barca or City.

Onana’s case is different, and United’s pursuit of the African goalkeeper has important ramifications for the club. Ajax, who expect to gross over €150m on the sales of De Jong and De Ligt, are under zero financial pressure to sell, and would prefer not to lose two cornerstones of their defence in a single window.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

According to a source familiar with the negotiations, the Dutch club value Onana at €40m, a figure United consider inflated. As The Transfer Window podcast first reported on Friday, United’s recruitment team has proposed a former Ajax goalkeeper, Jasper Cillessen, as an alternative signing.

Also fancied by Benfica, Cillessen would be cheaper, as Barcelona are asking €25m plus performance-related variables for the Netherlands international. The 30-year-old is open to a transfer, having publicly stated his intention “to have a new club where I can play” next season following three campaigns in which he has been a back-up to Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

Both Onana and Cillessen are schooled in the Ajax-Barca style of goalkeeping, comfortable with the ball at their feet and operating behind a high defensive line. Where Cillessen spent five years at Ajax before moving to Catalonia, Onana was brought to Barcelona as a 13-year-old via Samuel Eto’o’s foundation, then moved to Amsterdam at age 18. They are both very different in style to David De Gea.

That United are making bids for goalkeepers of their type indicates that Solskjaer – if forced to lose his best player – wants to use the change of number one to effect a tactical switch. Expect next season’s team to defend higher up the pitch, and pass the ball more at the back.

(Image: Getty Images)

It also underlines the uncertainty over De Gea’s future at Old Trafford. The Spain international – voted the Premier League’s top keeper in five of the last seven seasons – has been in contractual deadlock with Woodward. De Gea’s current deal expires in a year’s time. He wants his status as United’s best and most consistent performer to be rewarded by a salary on the same level as that granted to Alexis Sanchez in January 2018.

United’s executive vice-chairman has made it clear that such an increase is impossible, and the player is unimpressed. As matters stand, De Gea will be free to agree a pre-contract, and a signing-on fee in the tens of millions next January. If he continues to refuse De Gea’s salary demands, Woodward’s comes down to retaining a discontented footballer for another season, or selling him this summer for whatever fee United can secure.

On such decisions are on-field fortunes built. Since Ferguson stepped away from the manager’s office, and David Gill the chief executive’s, United have got more wrong than right. Forced onto the back foot by choices of his own making, you wonder whether Woodward is capable of making the correct summer calls at the seventh time of asking.