Manchester United is looking at Napoli full-back Faouzi Ghoulam as Jose Mourinho looks to strengthen his team in the January Transfer Window. United spent over a 150 million pounds and brought in several top stars in the summer. However, Jose’s men have been unable to mount a serious title challenge and have fallen far behind Manchester City.
It now seems Jose has turned his attention to Algerian fullback Faouzi Ghoulam. The talented defender had been in excellent form this season and has helped his team to the top of the table in Serie A. However, back in October the 26-year old suffered a serious ACL injury that has ruled him out for the rest of the season.
The full-back has a mammoth £52.6 million release clause and it appears that Manchester United are ready to activate that clause to solve their left-back crisis.
Manchester United has had issues at left-back all season with Luke Shaw yet to prove his mettle and Ashley Young filling in temporarily. The English full-back has only made a handful of appearances for the Red Devils this season. Back up options at left back Daley Blind and Marcos Rojo has also suffered a bad patch of form with Rojo additionally being added to the list of injured players as well quite often.
In such circumstances, with chances drying up Luke Shaw will want regular game time and a chance to impress England boss before the World Cup next year. However, he has been pegged back by injuries and his career never took off at Old Trafford and might want to move away. With the report of Ghoulam adding to the list of concerns for Shaw to deal with, the Englishman might well be packing his bags.
If the 26-year-old Ghoulam is to move to Old Trafford, it would surely spell the end of his career at Manchester United. Despite being fit this time around from May, Mourinho has overlooked the England player in favour of other United footballers like Ashley Young, Daley Blind and Matteo Darmian before finally turning towards Shaw since the end of December.
Ghoulam’s move to United, however, will be a risky one given that the Algerian is now injured for a long time. He has had to go under the knife and it is a well-known upsetting truth about them that it is always a risk to sign anyone post a surgery. The player is not only short on confidence but also has a lagging issue on most occasions on the part of the body, which underwent the surgery.
