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A midfielder from the Ukrainian league and a teenage full-back with just eight first-team appearances under his belt. It's not very United is it?

And, yet, Fred and Diogo Dalot could help herald a new era at Old Trafford. Forget shirt sales or generating record social media interactions; these are the functional players Jose Mourinho really needs.

The Portuguese submitted his transfer wish list to executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward earlier this year after being fed information from the club's scouts on prospective targets in the last 12 months.

Woodward and head of corporate development, Matt Judge, regularly meet with United's scouting team, which has trebled in size in recent years.

"This goes unseen and is not necessarily about bringing in more and more young players, but making sure that the correct due diligence is carried out before signings are made," a United source previously told MEN Sport.

That reshuffle is ongoing. United are currently on the lookout for a scout in France to identify world-class and emerging talent for the club, ensuring a talent pipeline and a world-class first-team squad'.

But they made a key appointment in Javier Ribalta last summer after snaring the Spaniard from Juventus following five impressive years working in Turin.

Ribalta operates alongside chief scout Jim Lawlor and the club's head of global scouting, Marcel Bout, and, one year on from his arrival, this will be the first transfer window where fans will begin to notice his influence.

At Juventus, Ribalta broadly targeted two kinds of players while leading a team of 20 scouts:

A. Peak-aged footballers who had a point to prove or more to give, such as Dani Alves, Patrice Evra, Fernando Llorente, Hernanes, Sami Khedira, Mario Mandzukic and Carlos Tevez.

B. Younger talents whose value would rocket in the right set-up: Kingsley Coman, Paulo Dybala, Miralem Pjanic, Alex Sandro and, of course, Alvaro Morata.

Morata proved compatriot Ribalta's legacy signing at Juventus and was the first player the Bianconeri paid more than £17.5m for in six seasons.

It was Ribalta who helped Morata settle in as he left his family and friends in Madrid for the first time in 2014. So much so that Morata's father, Alfonso, called him a 'phenomenon'.

Tellingly, Morata name-checked Ribalta in his goodbye message to Juventus ahead of re-joining Madrid two years later and the scout was even invited to his wedding in Venice last summer.

Naturally, fans put two and two together when Ribalta was appointed and United honed in on Morata but, of course, Mourinho was also speaking to top target Romelu Lukaku at the time.

Realistically, though, this is the first summer that Ribalta will have any influence on proceedings now that he has settled into life at Old Trafford.

And the man who speaks five languages will be desperate to deliver. For fear of missing out on a diamond, Ribalta watches every single video an agent sends him and is not afraid to look at junior levels for a left field target.

At Juventus, for example, Ribalta watched Scotland youngster Jordan McGhee in action for Hearts in the Edinburgh derby in November, 2013; he was also spotted scouting Benfica's under-19s last year.

There could be another few surprises in store this summer.

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