Old Trafford could do with a new face or two, but the need is no more pressing because of their opening defeat by Crystal Palace
Last weekend, a small but significant part of Manchester United’s online fanbase got themselves extremely excited by a new Instagram Story posted by their on-off transfer target, the Borussia Dortmund winger Jadon Sancho.
Over recent years, the increasingly feverish fetishisation of transfer gossip has been mirrored in the growth of an army of amateur online detectives who scour the social media posts of footballers – and often their partners and families – for even the vaguest hint they may be on the move. Planes are tracked across the North Sea. Isn’t that row of elms the same as the one outside Arsenal’s training ground? If I’m not mistaken, that broken grit box is from the A560, which is how you’d get from Manchester airport to Carrington if the M56 is gridlocked. And so on.
