After Gareth Bale confirmed he’ll be going nowhere for the time being, per Paul Gorst of The Mirror, Manchester Unitedcan turn their attentions to areas of the team in more pertinent need of addressing. And according to Jamie Jackson of The Guardian, Everton’s Seamus Coleman has been marked as a January target for the Red Devils.
Van Gaal will target Coleman in January.
Jackson’s piece suggests that Louis van Gaal has an outside hope of getting the Irishman to Old Trafford in a deal that’d be worth £20 million to the Toffees. The 26-year-old has enjoyed a remarkable rise during his time on Merseyside and is now rightly revered as one of the best full-backs in the Premier League.
With that in mind, it’s understandable that the Toffees will be keen to keep hold of their man, and Everton boss Roberto Martinez quashed rumours earlier this week regarding a potential deal, per Andrew Horgan of Goal.com:
For me that’s nothing. There is nothing for me to comment on, really. I haven’t seen that [rumour], so have no recollection of that.
As you can imagine, what we want at the football club is to build something special and to make us stronger so the last thing we want to do is lose important players so no there has been no contact.
Van Gaal’s interest in Coleman is understandable. The Irishman is a persistent attacking threat up and down the right flank after all, meaning he’d be an ideal candidate to play as an orthodox full-back in a 4-1-2-1-2 diamond formation or as a wing-back in the 5-3-2 system that has recently been deployed by Van Gaal.
Coleman has an exceptional patent for scoring goals too, as Squawka Football noted earlier this season:
The Irishman’s defensive work has also improved in recent seasons, and although he's not enjoying his best campaign at the moment, there’s little doubt he’s a player who could come in at Old Trafford and provide United with an exciting new dimension on the right flank. But Everton will surely be unwilling to sell a player who is vital to their cause midseason unless they receive a monster offer.
Everton won't be keen to cash in on Coleman.
Indeed, it’s not often that clubs are willing to part with prized assets during January, but that might not be the case with Atletico Madrid.
According to Rhys Turrell of the Daily Star, the Spanish champions are keen to offload Brazilian defender Joao Miranda to a Premier League club for a fee just shy of £20 million, and United are one of three teams interested.
Here's a closer look at Atletico's defensive structure, of which Miranda is a critical component:
Atletico’s formidable defensive set-up provided the foundations for their domestic glory last season, but according to Turrell’s piece, Miranda’s a player whom manager Diego Simeone will be willing to let go midseason if the club receive the right price for his services.
The emergence of young defender Jose Gimenez has also lead plenty to question whether or not Miranda should continue to command a starting place in the team alongside Diego Godin. But if Atletico were to offload him, United should be at the front of the queue, with their central-defensive options looking somewhat scarce as we stand on the cusp of a new year.
The likes of Coleman and Miranda may not be the most glamorous of names, and they won’t sate the ambitions of supporters who want a January splurge to match last summer's spree. But they’d both be sensible acquisitions for areas of the field in which United are currently in pretty short supply, and they'd be signings Van Gaal knows will be vital for this team’s continued progression.
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