Bid prepared: Man United to try again to sign €40m-rated 22-year-old

The 22-year-old has impressed a great deal at Barca in recent times, earning the reputation for being one of the best young full-backs in Europe.

While Barcelona would surely ideally keep Balde, they face interest from Man Utd, according to Fichajes , and there’s a recognition that they might need to accept an offer in the region of €40m to ease their financial issues.

It will be interesting to see if this develops into something concrete, but it would be quite the coup if the Red Devils could land themselves a top talent like this for a pretty reasonable price.

We will surely see United making more changes to their squad this summer, with Balde looking like he could be a useful addition to give the club a long-term successor to the ageing and injury-prone Luke Shaw.

MUFC did sign Patrick Dorgu last January but he’s ended up playing further forward, so it could make sense to bring in Balde as the new first-choice left-back.

Given his age, rumoured asking price, and all-round profile, it’s hard to see this as anything other than an excellent potential signing for United.

See below for how we’ve rated the Balde to Man Utd deal using our Transfer Fit rating system – find out how it works here …

The only worry is recent performance, with his form actually going down slightly this season with a WhoScored rating of just 6.70 , but fans can probably be fairly confident of that just being a temporary blip.

United fans will surely be hoping something serious can develop here, but it probably won’t become clear for a little while yet if it’s a particularly realistic deal.

Fichajes can be quite speculative, so even if there’s interest from United, and it would undoubtedly be a fine signing, it doesn’t mean they’ll actually be able to do it.