Is the measure of whether there's anyone decent available resting on a random caf poster now? I mean it takes one tweet and suddenly new midfield options become caf favourites, perhaps fans don't a sufficient view.
This lazy 'no one available' line is repeated nearly every window to excuse our lack of midfield reinforcement. It's evidently bollocks because that can't be the case.
Is it? Two summers ago when we brought in VDB, people thought that in depth we had a very strong midfield. Matic, Fred, Mctominay, Pogba, VDB looked good enough, and frankly we got 2nd place (although we know that was well above our standards). This summer we spent almost the entire budget on Varane, Sancho and Ronaldo with reports saying we probably had around 20 mill for a midfielder, but that wasn't enough to bring in a starter.
This January we could probably dip into our summer budget to bring in a CM/CDM but for us to do that we'd want to bring in actual starting quality not just another squad player. For a week the caf favourite was Zakaria, but it seems we have actively scouted and decided against him. There's Haidara, who plays in a similar role to both Fred and McTominay and his 40 mill release clause isn't active until the summer and RB Leipzig don't want to sell now anyway. The one people seem to be hoping for is João Palhinha, but is he much better than options who would become available in the summer. It has been reported a fair few times by The Athletic that midfield is our focus this summer.
It has always been United's line that they don't buy in January unless it is a player worth buying.