Ex-scout reveals three top players Manchester United missed out on | OneFootball

A former Manchester United scout has lifted the lid on some of the names the club have missed out on over the past few transfer windows.

Derek Langley worked at Old Trafford for 16 years before he was let go in 2016. According to Langley, the club pushed him out for not “towing the line”

Under Ed Woodward’s tenure, United have struggled to find value for emerging players with manager José Mourinho seeing his relationship with the board hit a new low over the summer after they failed to attract a world class centre-back.

And now Langley has revealed that they missed out on signing highly-rated Ajax pair Matthijs De Ligt and Frenkie De Jong because of inaction from above.

“Players that they turned down? Matthijs de Ligt. We had God knows how many reports on Matthijs de Ligt,” Langley told the Manchester Evening News.

“Frenkie de Jong and all these players now are sort of around Europe. Dayot Upamecano, who is now at RB Leipzig, was another.

“This was one of the reasons why I had a meeting with Ed Woodward and I told him that I wasn’t convinced with the competency of certain people at the club.

“I told Ed Woodward quite straight: ‘If you think I’m going to sit here and just tell you what you want to hear, I’m not that man because I’m going to tell you exactly how I see it.’

“I think it was possibly part of my downfall as to why seven months down the line I was removed because I wouldn’t tow the line in relation to telling them exactly what I thought.

“It’s one of them things in football – you come to accept it. Manchester United thanked me for the time I spent there and the players I’d taken in, but ultimately we could have been so much better if people had listened.”

De Jong and De Ligt are now seen as two of the most highly sought-after youngsters in Europe. The Ajax duo have been heavily linked with moves to the likes of Barcelona, Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain.