After locking on Harry Kane as one of their primary targets this summer, Manchester United is planning their next raid on North-London club Tottenham Hotspur for their star, Eric Dier. According to reports, the former Premier League champions have identified the defensive midfielder as the perfect long-term replacement for their old midfielder Michael Carrick.
Manchester United failed to move out of their sixth position in the league table yet again as they were stalled to frustrating 1-1 draw by an adamant Bournemouth side, who defended the full second half with 10 men at Old Trafford. The high-profile buying of Paul Pogba has been pretty much a disaster for United and now with Carrick closing in on retirement at the end of the season, United’s midfield would be needing someone who could hold it in an assured manner with Ander Herrera.
And Tottenham’s Eric Dier has shown his brilliant ability in doing exactly that in the last two seasons. United manager Jose Mourinho has reportedly asked the club to get him the player. As per Manchester Evening News, the Portuguese manager stated, “I’m not giving what you ask me—qualities or positions. I give names… Normally the perfect market doesn’t exist when you establish targets. It’s very difficult to get exactly what you want, especially nowadays.”
The former Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Chelsea manager continued, “But we want to improve, we need to improve for the next step. We lost players that were not very important in our first choices. But we lost [Memphis] Depay, [Morgan] Schneiderlin and got nobody. At the end of the season every club there’s always two players to go in, three players to go out. That’s normal. There will be something normal to improve our team globally.
As per the Sun, United are ready to shell out as much as £35million for the midfielder for the England international. It also stated that Mourinho would be given a transfer kitty of a whopping £200million to bring further reinforcements.
A gem unearthed by Mauricio Pochettino when he took over Spurs job, along with Dele Alli and Harry Kane, Eric Dier has since been an integral part of Pochettino’s plan. The defensive midfielder has taken the centre half’s role quite brilliantly when Toby Alderweireld was out for a month in the beginning of the season. Kevin Wimmer’s position is pretty much in danger because of Dier’s versatility at the back.
Since breaking into the first team back in 2014/15 season, the midfielder has played 121 matches for the Lilywhites bagging six goals and five assists. He also 14 senior national caps since debuting in November 2015, where he has scored 2 goals.
