For a while now, it’s believed that Manchester United have been after Ronald Araujo, currently struggling with his renewal at Barcelona.
There have been suggestions that this is all a ploy to get the Catalans to up their offer, but there is rarely this much smoke without some sort of fire somewhere, meaning it wouldn’t be surprising if the Red Devils were indeed keen on the Uruguayan to bolster their defence.
The centre-back would certainly help a struggling backline, where the likes of Harry Maguire are currently being booed even when they don’t have a Manchester United shirt on their back.
Still, there have been multiple reports that Ralf Rangnick’s side have put forward a rather large contract to the Barcelona defender to convince him to not renew, making a potential transfer easier for them to pull off.
There is little optimism in Catalonia that they’ll get their man to extend that, because they have ‘run into the interest of many great teams that want to hire the Uruguayan central defender’.
It’s made clear that ‘one of them is Manchester United’, who, per Cadena COPE, are ‘offering double’ what Barcelona have placed on the table for their player, meaning ‘everything is pending’ for the time being.
That being said, Araujo has publicly said he’d like to stay, but it’s clear he won’t do it at any price, because if he’s playing regularly, he’ll want his paycheque to show that.
