MANCHESTER UNITED AGREE DEAL TO SIGN CHRISTIAN ERIKSEN AS MALACIA DEAL FINALIZES
Christian Eriksen has agreed to a deal in principle to join Manchester United according to multiple reports that came out on Monday morning.
Manchester United and Eriksen are expected to finalize a three-year deal, tying down the Danish international to Old Trafford until at least June 2025. Eriksen will sign the deal sometime this week and already has a medical scheduled. It is reported that the 30-year-old had direct talks with new Manchester United boss Erik Ten Hag, something that played a key factor in his decision-making.
Eriksen spent the last half of the previous season at Brentford after leaving Inter Milan due to Serie A regulations around players playing with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. The Danish international had the defibrillator fitted into his chest after suffering a cardiac arrest during Denmark’s EURO 2020 group game against Finland in Copenhagen on the 12th of June last year. Eriksen returned to football nearly 6 months after the cardiac arrest with individual training at the facilities of his youth academy team Odense Boldklub in Odense. He eventually signed with Brentford on the 31st of January after Inter Milan terminated his contract on the 17th of December.
Manchester United showed interest in the veteran playmaker and the club was always in the market for midfielders after losing Paul Pogba, Nemanja Matic, Jesse Lingard and Juan Mata this summer. United also pursued Eriksen in 2019 before his move to Inter Milan but the transfer never materialized. According to De Telegraaf’s Marcel van der Kraan, Erik Ten Hag had Christian Eriksen high on his wish list after seeing his high-level performances since his return to professional football and the club made the free agent a top priority this summer as a result.
Brentford were also in the running for Eriksen and were hoping to re-sign him after he helped keep the team up in the Premier League last season, but the Middelfart-born midfielder had already communicated to Manchester United his desire to play for the club.
Eriksen is a brilliant signing for Manchester United, a team in desperate need of high-level players after the team’s poor showing last season saw them finish a staggering 35 points behind champions Manchester City and sixth on the Premier League table. A top-quality and technically gifted player, Eriksen is proven in the Premier League after spells at both Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford and has always had a fantastic mentality and attitude. His ability to collect the ball from deep is something that United fans will hope ends up having an impact on Ten Hag’s possession-based football scheme.
Since the 2013/14 season, only Manchester City’s Kevin De Bryune has had more assists in the Premier League than the Danish maverick, whose technical ability and tactical versatility speaks for themselves. Eriksen created the third-most chances in the league last season since his debut on the 26th of February. Only De Bryune and Arsenal’s Martin Ødegaard created more chances, and the Dane had 5 goal involvements in 11 games for Brentford. His 4 assists and one goal mean he was involved in a goal every 188 minutes, bettering United’s current playmaker Bruno Fernandes. Eriksen also had more successful dribbles per 90 than the Portuguese star. The Danish midfielder ranked in the top 4% of Premier League players for assists per 90 and the top 1% for xA per 90 and passes into the final third per 90, averaging 11.64 passes per game.
Eriksen is expected to be one of Manchester United’s first big name signings this summer with the club rumored to be pursuing Ajax’s winger Antony, centre-back Lisandro Martinez, and Barcelona’s Frenkie De Jong after securing 22-year-old left-back Tyrell Malacia from Feyenoord for £12.9million last week. Malacia arrived at Carrington on Monday morning for the second part of his medical before an official announcement is made confirming the Netherlands international as part of Ten Hag’s team.
   Manchester United will leave for their pre-season tour of Thailand and Australia on Friday and Ten Hag will want as many players as he can possibly muster on that tour. Manchester Evening News reports that the club intends to complete five signings by the end of their pre-season tour and as it stands, it currently looks like Ten Hag will have two new additions on that flight to Thailand.
-Maher Abucheri
Twitter: @pabloikonyero
Photo: Дмитрий Голубович. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.