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Manchester United: Ten Hag holds ‘secret meeting’ with Marco Reus’ agent
Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has personally met for talks with Dirk Hebel, the agent of Borussia Dortmund star Marco Reus.
The Lowdown: Attackers wanted
The Red Devils are certainly lacking a bit of firepower up front to really cement the impressive turnaround in form over the last few months.
Ten Hag’s side have conceded just twice in their last five Premier League matches while their last six top flight fixtures at Old Trafford have brought five clean sheets, but the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo has left them a little light at the other end of the pitch.
Wout Weghorst is surely no more than a stop-gap option while Anthony Martial has scored just three league goals this season. It is then perhaps no surprise to see the boss eyeing up an extra dose of end product for his attacking ranks.
The Latest: Reus meeting
According to Sport Bild’s Head of Football, Christian Falk, the Manchester United manager has held a ‘secret meeting’ with Reus’ agent.
Expanding in his column for Caught Offside, Falk writes that the Dutchman is keen on Reus and that the Dortmund fan favourite currently earns €12m-a-year (about £202k-per-week) on a contract that expires this summer.
Just last weekend, another of Reus’ representatives, Darren Freeman, was spotted alongside Hebel at Old Trafford during the Manchester derby, so this rumour certainly appears to have some legs.
The Verdict: Risky…
Whether this would be a cut-price January switch or a pre-agreement for when Reus becomes a free agent is not yet clear, but there is no doubting the 33 year-old’s talent.
The 48-cap Germany international, who has 15 goals for his national side, has racked up 156 goals and 118 assists in 368 games for Dortmund, with seven of those goal contributions coming in 12 appearances this season. His best spell actually came under Jurgen Klopp, directly contributing to 97 goals in 121 games for the Liverpool boss, once calling the former Dortmund coach “an animal“.
He sits in the 76th percentile for non-penalty goals per 90 amongst positional peers in Europe’s top five leagues, while perhaps more impressively also ranking highly in terms of assists (93rd percentile) and tackles (90th percentile), showing he still brings much more to a team than just end product (FBRef).
However, his career list of injury issues spans more than four pages on Transfermarkt’s database, missing 11 games this season alone with an ongoing ankle problem.
Given his status as a soon-to-be free agent, he would no doubt be commanding an improvement on or at the very least equivalent of his current salary, and the Red Devils should not be shelling out huge wages for an injury-prone player who turns 34 this summer.
