Man Utd ‘close to agreeing a deal’ for ex-Liverpool transfer guru after making ‘hugely attractive offer’

Man Utd are closing in on the addition of former Liverpool technical director Michael Edwards after making him a very attractive offer, according to reports.

Edwards joined Liverpool from Tottenham where he took up a similar role as head of performance analysis in 2011 before eventually being promoted to technical director.

He held that position for six years before leaving Anfield at the end of last season after a hugely successful spell at the Merseyside outfit.

Edwards received a lot of acclaim for many of the club’s transfer during that period with the 42-year-old understood to have played an influential role in the club signing players such as Vigil van Dijk, Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah.

The Red Devils have been on the lookout for somebody to play a similar role at Old Trafford for a long time with rumours of former players such as Edwin van der Sar taking on a director of football role.

That has not materialised and now it seems that Man Utd are closing in on Edwards with Football Insider insisting that they ‘are confident of beating Chelsea to the appointment’ of the former Liverpool transfer guru.

The report claims that Man Utd are ‘close to agreeing a deal with the 43-year-old and are willing to wait until next summer for him to join’ the club.

Man Utd have made a number of expensive mistakes in previous transfer windows, since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, and they are keen to avoid the same errors with Edwards seen as the ‘right man to oversee their transfer business’.

Football Insider says that Man Utd have made Edwards a ‘hugely attractive offer’ and is ‘keen on a new challenge’ after starting his year-long sabbatical from the game.

Despite making a number of offers to Edwards, it is understood that Chelsea ‘have now turned their attention to alternative targets’, leaving Man Utd to ‘push ahead with agreeing terms’.

To highlight the problem that Edwards could face, Gary Neville insisted in August that only two of their signings since the summer of 2013 had been a success.

“One of the problems Manchester United have had for 10 years is that they’ve flip-flopped from managers, strategies and they’ve allowed managers to control recruitment, and that’s a massive issue,” Neville told Sky Sports.

“We think there’s only two signings at this moment in time that you can say have been good and performed at a decent level. You can argue that [Bruno] Fernandes has gone off the boil a little but the numbers that he hit in the last few seasons has worked.

“75 per cent of those signings are in red, they’ve not worked. 20 per cent are an amber and only four (or) five per cent of signings, we think, have worked. That is a horror story from a recruitment point of view.”

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