{"id":88938,"date":"2025-07-24T15:20:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/88938\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:20:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:20:13","slug":"manchester-united-can-repeat-transfer-tactic-to-sign-their-top-target-but-theres-a-catch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/88938\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester United can repeat transfer tactic to sign their top target – but there’s a catch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Man United are in desperate need of a striker this summer and Aston Villa ace Ollie Watkins is continuing to be linked with a move to M16.<\/p>\n

George is a Senior Football Writer for the Manchester Evening News, mostly covering Manchester United. He previously worked for football.london before joining the MEN team in July 2021. As well as covering United, George is a Championship-enthusiast and co-hosts The Championship Chat Podcast (@Champchatpod24), which you can find on all major podcast platforms.<\/p>\n

\"OllieOllie Watkins is being linked with a move to Manchester United.(Image: Warren Little\/Getty Images.)<\/p>\n

There was once a time when Bryan Mbeumo and Ollie Watkins formed two thirds of the Championship’s best attack.<\/p>\n

Alongside Said Benrahma, who is now at Saudi Arabian club Neom SC, the duo helped form a formidable front-three at Brentford, often dubbed as ‘BMW’.<\/p>\n

They all made their names in the Championship and were eventually sold by Brentford for big-money, with Mbeumo’s<\/a> recent move to Manchester United<\/a> banking the Londoners a fixed price of \u00a365million. The deal could eventually be worth \u00a371m.<\/p>\n

Mbeumo was identified as a top target for United this summer after scoring 20 Premier League goals for Brentford last season. After helping the Bees win promotion from the Championship in 2021, he scored 42 goals in four Premier League seasons for the Bees.<\/p>\n

Watkins left Brentford just under a year before they graduated to the Premier League, joining Aston Villa in September 2020. That saw him offered the chance to play in the top-flight for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n

Despite playing non-league football for Weston-super-Mare just a few years earlier, Watkins immediately adapted to life in the Premier League, scoring 14 goals and registering five assists in 37 appearances.<\/p>\n

That 14-goal haul marked a sign of things to come for Watkins at Villa Park. Each of his five Premier League campaigns at the club have seen him reach double figures for goals, scoring 14, 11, 15, 19 and 16 goals in the last five league campaigns respectively.<\/p>\n

Although he has never hit the 20-goal marker in a league campaign during his Villa career, he has always been a reliable and consistent source of goals. The 2023\/24 campaign was his standout at Villa Park, scoring 19 goals and registering 13 assists in the Premier League.<\/p>\n

Last season, although not as fruitful, he still contributed 16 goals and eight assists in 38 league appearances. Watkins’ hopes of scoring 20 goals in a single Premier League<\/a> campaign for the first time last term were scuppered by the addition of Marcus Rashford in January.<\/p>\n

\"OllieOllie Watkins has been a reliable goalscorer for Aston Villa in recent years.(Image: Shaun Botterill\/Getty Images.)<\/p>\n

The United attacker, who joined Barcelona on loan earlier this week, was often deployed through the middle at Villa Park by Unai Emery, meaning Watkins lost his place in the starting XI. Rashford has always been more effective on the left and the expectation was he and Watkins would join forces in attack.<\/p>\n

Amid United’s ongoing search for a striker, Watkins is continuing to be linked with a move to Old Trafford. The Reds are desperate to recruit a centre-forward this summer to complement the additions of Matheus Cunha<\/a> and Mbeumo.<\/p>\n

United have finished each of the last two Premier League campaigns with a negative goal difference and have not been able to rely on an out-and-out centre-forward for goals since Cristiano Ronaldo scored 24 goals in his homecoming season in 2021\/22.<\/p>\n

A club of United’s stature needs to be able to rely on a proven goalscorer to spearhead their attack. Rasmus Hojlund<\/a> scored just four Premier League goals last term and Joshua Zirkzee, who was signed to support him, scored just seven times across all competitions.<\/p>\n

Having targeted unproven operators to try and strengthen the tip of their attack in each of the last two summers, United need a tried and tested option this summer, and they will not find many options better than Watkins.<\/p>\n

Having missed out on Liam Delap, who joined Chelsea from Ipswich Town via a \u00a330m release clause, United have been chasing lost causes in their striker search. Viktor Gyokeres and Victor Osimhen have both been heavily linked with United throughout the summer but are now expected to move elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\"ViktorViktor Gyokeres is set to join Arsenal.(Image: Valter Gouveia\/NurPhoto via Getty Images.)<\/p>\n

Attainable strikers are at a premium this summer, and United have acknowledged that. But with the Reds in such desperate need of a goal-getter, they are going to have to pluck one from somewhere.<\/p>\n

If they were to swoop for Watkins, United could do far worse. Although he is yet to break the 20-goal barrier in the Premier League, he has often gone close.<\/p>\n

Having swooped for Cunha and Mbeumo already this summer, Watkins would also tie in with theme of recruiting players with Premier League pedigree. Unfortunately for United, however, the sticking point is that Villa will set lofty demands amid the fact he is under contract until 2028.<\/p>\n

It once again highlights the importance of United getting money in the bank via player sales to fund their top transfer objective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Man United are in desperate need of a striker this summer and Aston Villa ace Ollie Watkins is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":88939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[3898,4728,221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-88938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-manchester-united-fc","9":"tag-manchester-united-transfer-news","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114908890722778274","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}