Manchester United weigh up Nicolas Tagliafico move as talks to sign Alex Telles stall

Manchester United have reportedly identified Ajax star Nicolas Tagliafico as a possible target in case they fail in their pursuit of Alex Telles.

Tagliafico’s former Ajax team-mate, Donny van de Beek, remains United’s sole addition with less than two weeks remaining of the summer transfer window but Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is keen to bring in further reinforcements at left-back, on the right wing and in central defence.

Though Telles is thought to be the Red Devils’ priority target at left-back, the club have been forced to explore alternatives, with Porto standing firm over their £23million valuation of the Brazil international.

The Premier League giants even offered up Diogo Dalot in a player-plus-cash deal for Telles but the proposal was swiftly rejected by Porto.

According to The Sun, Porto are adamant that their £23m asking price for Telles is paid in full and United have stepped up their interest in Tagliafico as a result.

However, the report claims Ajax are demanding an identical fee for Tagliafico (£23m) which could prevent a deal from getting off the ground ahead of next month’s deadline.

Tagliafico was firmly on Leicester’s radar at the start of the summer but the Foxes instead landed Atalanta’s Timothy Castagne, who has impressed at the start of the 2020/21 Premier League campaign.

Despite his place seemingly under threat with the possible addition of a new left-back, Luke Shaw called on United to bring in more signings in the wake of their 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace.

‘We have a very good group, but personally I think we need more players to strengthen the squad,’ he told TV2.

‘It can give us a boost. When you look around at how other teams are strengthening their teams, then we must also do it to keep up with the others.’

The England defender continued: ‘Possibly everything went wrong.

‘Personally, from my point of view, the pre-season that we’ve had altogether is not the correct way it should have been. We’ve had a week all together.

‘My first day back training: I could have probably counted on one hand the number of people who were training. We have only been back a week all together.

‘Look at teams who have been together a while, training, playing games. I think Palace have played quite a few more games than us and it showed tonight. We lacked that fitness and confidence.

‘We haven’t been able to prepare in the way that we wanted and that’s not an excuse because we have the quality of players to be able to win games like this but we weren’t up to it tonight and we’ve been punished. It’s the start of a new season, we should have been fresh.

‘We’re back in training tomorrow. A lot of things were said after the game and we need to put it to bed tonight. We need to be very disappointed because we should be, but forget about it tomorrow and move on tomorrow. Training tomorrow and we’ve got a big game on Tuesday.

‘We need to win that and pick up momentum again. At the start of the season it’s always key to how the season will go ahead.’