While we wait for official confirmation, many media sources including Sky Sports News and BBC Sport are reporting that Real Madrid goalkeeper Keylor Navas will join Manchester United as part of a deal that takes David De Gea to the Bernabeu.
The Costa Rican goalkeeper has been a consistently solid performer since joining from Levante after an impressive 2014 World Cup, but Madrid's pursuit of De Gea had meant that if the Spanish #1 found his way to Madrid, then Navas would be free to find a new club.
Ed Woodward has acted quickly to bring in Navas, and Guillem Balague is claiming that those in De Gea's camp have told him that this was Louis Van Gaal's long term plan all along, as Navas was the reason De Gea did not receive a new contract in 2014.
Accord. to de Gea camp, when Utd offered a new deal to him spring 2014, LvG stopped it as he prefered Navas. But will Navas want to come?
— Guillem Balague (@GuillemBalague) August 31, 2015
That seems bizarre to us.
While Navas did have an outstanding last season at Levante where he was the best goalkeeper in Spain, to suggest that Van Gaal ignored how De Gea performed under David Moyes, and even went as far as to stop a contract extension being signed as one of his first acts as Manchester United manager, seems barely believable.
Of course, many football fans would borrow an Eamon Dunphy term to describe Balague and his reliability, but the fact is that he does have many contacts in Spanish football, and it is highly possible that someone in De Gea's camp did indeed tell him this.
It will be interesting to see if Louis Van Gaal makes any comment on Navas in the coming days, or when the squad returns from International duty, but the deal is believed to be all but done.
Navas accepts. De Gea deal done!! €40m all-in. £29m. Manchester United happy - near record for player with 1 year left
— Guillem Balague (@GuillemBalague) August 31, 2015
Keylor Navas has proven himself to be a far more reliable goalkeeper than Sergio Romero in his club career so far, so if he can adapt to English football then his signing represents a good bit of business from Manchester United considering the inevitability of De Gea's departure.
