Sadio Mane: Manchester United given encouragement over potential transfer, but not expecting deal

The Southampton forward failed to make a team meeting before Saturday’s defeat at Norwich and showed a poor attitude in training last week

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The conversations which took place when Louis van Gaal’s spirits were on the floor two weeks ago – increasingly convinced that the Manchester United project was beyond him – included an insistence from the club that they would help out in this month’s transfer market if he could just tough it out.

Now comes the test of whether the club can make good on that offer. Privately, United have been wholly unconvinced for the past three months that Southampton would sell them Sadio Mané, whom they are still interested in adding to their strike force, in the January transfer window because the value of next season’s television deal does not create a requirement to let anyone leave.

Mané’s failure to make a team meeting before Saturday’s defeat at Norwich and poor attitude in training last week offers encouragement to a club for whom a striker and left-back are priorities. But United face a number of substantial obstacles.

The Southampton manager, Ronald Koeman, has always been very strong on the point of no players leaving this month, with his board ready to back him with an agreement not to sell in January but only do business in the summer.

Neither is Mané a player who has shown great desire to join United. He did not agitate to go last summer and the weekend episode, which angered Koeman, could simply be the latest example of his scatterbrained personality.

The policy of the club’s executive director of football, Les Reed, will be the same with Mané as it has been for those other Southampton players who have been adamant about leaving in the past 18 months: ask the maximum possible sum and see what happens. A £30m fee for the player, signed from Red Bull Salzburg for £11.8m, is likely to be the negotiating position.

Van Gaal said after the 2-1 win over Swansea City on Saturday that his side wanted to attack more because to do so was “the culture of Manchester United” and important “to please the fans”. It was an acknowledgement which suggested he knows he must do things United’s way, as well as following his own methods, if he is to succeed.

The problem is, when we see more attacking intent from United, whose three-man first-half defence on Saturday allowed a greater number of players to get forward, the defence’s frailty is exposed. Van Gaal is caught between a rock and a hard place: preferring more anaemic, defensive play, yet knowing he must ask his players to abandon caution, which is anathema to him.

Swansea have doubts of their own, with some of the players privately looking for the certainties attached to having a permanent manager.

Alan Curtis, the caretaker, is clearly doing more than Garry Monk with the same squad. He acknowledged that Swansea needed reinforcements – a striker is their requirement, too – but added that it was possible he may still be managing the side in eight weeks’ time.

“I don’t think anything would surprise me, it wouldn’t surprise me if somebody came in tomorrow as well,” he said. “You prepare for both scenarios. You do what you can do.”

Van Gaal was happy enough to pose for a fan selfie before disappearing off into the Manchester night, with his press secretary acting as photographer. He was reminded that United tended to be stronger in the second half of the season under Sir Alex Ferguson. “Yeah, that is what I am hoping,” he said. But one unconvincing, if more ambitious, performance does not make a season. The uncertainty remains.