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United agree £80m deal for Maguire

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OPINION

The Telegraph has reported that Man United have finally agreed on an £85m fee for Leicester centre-back Harry Maguire. 

It means that he will join Aaron Wan-Bissaka at Old Trafford and that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has snapped up two of the best English defenders in the game at the moment.

£85m is a huge amount of money – a world-record fee for a defender – but Solskjaer obviously saw Maguire as central to his overhaul of the United squad and the board has backed him.

But the deal does beg one question.

This has been a long-running transfer saga that’s spanned most of the summer. United have negotiated hard and, according to talkSPORT’s Jim White, made a take-it-or-leave-it £80m bid earlier today.

We wouldn’t have expected them to let the deal crumple for the sake of £5m but it seems that after months of talk, they’ve ended up paying exactly what Leicester wanted.

Given that, wouldn’t it have been a more sensible option to have paid the money earlier and had Maguire in for the crucial pre-season?

As it is, he’ll arrive too late for their final pre-season friendly against AC Milan tomorrow ahead of the club’s season opener against Chelsea.

This just seems like an odd decision by the United board and one that could hamper Solskjaer as he bids to get his new-look side bedded in.

Regardless, United fans will be delighted and will be looking for more late deals to go through – especially one for a certain Paulo Dybala.

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