The £68m man that Manchester United think could fix their struggling midfield

Blink and you’ll miss Manchester United transfer rumours at this point – not exactly unusual, given the size of the club’s online support base, but the expectation of a full squad rebuild means that it’s almost impossible to keep tabs on every last player that United have been linked with. Nevertheless, one of the many reports that flew across our desk yesterday caught the eye in particular.

This is a story from Sky Sports’ Florian Plettenberg, who believes that Manchester United have made an enquiry about West Ham United’s Mexican midfielder Edson Álvarez, who only joined the East London club from Ajax last summer. Apparently, manager Erik ten Hag has “a high opinion of him” and the transfer team are compiling report cards and crunching the numbers ahead of a possible bid. But is he really the man to turn United’s dismal midfield around?

Aside from the emergence of Kobbie Mainoo, things were pretty bleak at the heart of the park and Ten Hag had to endure a midfielder who continuously ceded control of the game without offering much in the way of attacking dynamism. Casemiro, who had been a culture-setter, saw his form collapse and the on-loan Sofyan Amrabat failed to match post-World Cup expectations. With the former likely to leave and the latter potentially remaining with Fiorentina, a new holding midfielder is an absolute necessity – the question is whether Álvarez is up to the task.

The nuts and bolts of the deal, according to Plettenberg, are that he comes with a €60-80m valuation (£50-68m) – hardly chicken feed in the world of profit and sustainability rules, so United need to be sure that they’re getting the right man. And the 26-year-old does, at least, have one attribute which he will need to be that man. He makes a lot of turnovers.

Last season, Álvarez averaged nearly three successful tackles and one-and-a-half interceptions per game, both big numbers at any level. Throw in a healthy number of blocked shots and clearances, and you have a defensive midfielder who can actually live up to the defensive half of the job description. In fairness to Casemiro, he’s only of relatively few players in the big five leagues who can match or exceed the numbers Álvarez puts up, but the Mexico international also has the energy, drive and consistency which were missing from the former Real Madrid man’s game.

And as the chart above suggests, Álvarez is also capable of doing more defensive work than some of his potential rivals for a spot in Ten Hag’s team, while keeping up with the passing and technical qualities required for the role, at least to a creditable extent – but he also covers more yards than his rivals, putting out fires across the pitch and rarely failing to find the energy to make one last lung-bursting run to deal with a problem.

And as well as having stamina and a huge work ethic, he also reads the game extremely well, which helps him to be effective at closing down passing angles on quick counter-attacks in particular, an important quality for a player who doesn’t have express pace in a team who look to stretch the pitch as United tried to do under Ten Hag last season.

A glance at the raw numbers strongly suggests that Álvarez is at least as good as the current crop of defensively-minded midfielders at Manchester United and would likely be an upgrade – but perhaps that’s answering the wrong question after all. Maybe a better question is whether he can clear a higher bar: Is he not just better than what United have right now, but also good enough to drive them back towards the Champions League placings?

Erik ten Hag will have a better idea than most having managed the Mexican at Ajax, but it has been suggested that he will have less influence over transfers now that minority shareholders Ineos have got their feet under the desk. The West Ham man may need to persuade the new transfer team that he’s up to the task as well.

That will be an interesting challenge. At OGC Nice, the club Ineos own in France, they have tended to favour younger and often more technically talented players than Álvarez. Perhaps being in charge of a superclub (or at least a team that should be a superclub) will see them take a different, less long-termist approach to transfer dealings, and maybe Ten Hag can twist some arms hard enough to get his man. And if he does, the hopefully it will work out better than it did with Antony.

Álvarez is a strong player with the drive, mentality and key attributes to thrive at Old Trafford. The question is whether he has the technique and thrill factor to impress Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his cohorts and to persuade them to invest a substantial part of their summer budget in him . That, at least, remains to be seen.