The summer may see Manchester United’s new owners take advantage of their good relationship with football super agent Jorge Mendes.

“Manchester United’s prospective new owners reportedly have a strong relationship with agent Jorge Mendes,” according to reports.

The Old Trafford team refrained from making any signings during the January transfer window in favor of concentrating on reducing the team’s size through a range of sales and loan agreements.

In theory, United should be in a much stronger position to do deals in the summer, in what would be INEOS’ first summer window, which they will be wanting to use to lay down a marker in regard to their ambition for the club.

According to reports, “the INEOS group could use their connection with agent Mendes in order to help bring players to Old Trafford ahead of next season, as United hope to bring success back to the club after a difficult few years”.

“It’s understood that Mendes, who is known as one of the best agents in the game, has a strong relationship with INEOS, with their founder, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, set to take over at Old Trafford. Interestingly, United have been linked with a host of Mendes’ clients over the past few months, so it will be interesting to see whether any links gather momentum ahead of the summer transfer window”.

Some of those players include Joao Neves, Antonio Silva, Leny Yoro and Pedro Neto.

Transfer guru, Fabrizio Romano, has also given his two cents on the relationship.

“Obviously Jorge Mendes is one of the best agents in the world. So he has some of the best players in the world and it’s normal to appreciate some of his clients,” he noted in the same report.

However, the world-famous sports journalist tempered optimism with the assertion that, “but at the moment there is still really nothing advanced or concrete because I think Manchester United will take their time before deciding the top targets”.

“It will involve the manager, the new director of football, new people from INEOS taking care of the transfer market and Manchester United. So it’s going to probably be a long process and not something that is happening in the next couple of days or weeks.”

Nonetheless, perhaps even this news will be met positively by United fans, as for far too long, summer windows have been seen to pass by with little thought and planning, so having owners who plan carefully and intelligently will be a welcome change of pace.

As long as INEOS are ready to strike early in the window, as they intend to do, United supporters will probably be happy to wait before more concrete names of targets appear.

Alex Browne

Alex is a huge Manchester United fan, inspired by greats of his homeland such as George Best, Harry Gregg and Norman Whiteside. Proud owner of such niche shirts such as Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba and Gary Neville. Grew up pretending to be Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the back garden, with little success.