Manchester United have reportedly kept Southampton midfielder Shea Charles on their radar as a budget-friendly alternative should Manuel Ugarte depart this summer. The Daily Mail says United\u2019s recruitment team is monitoring a wide set of options and could turn to lower-cost targets if a failure to secure Champions League football limits transfer funds.<\/p>\n
United remain expected to pursue top-market replacements for Casemiro, with Elliot Anderson, Sandro Tonali, Adam Wharton and Carlos Baleba among those linked, each valued in the nine-figure bracket. That route remains likely while United hold a strong grip on third place in the domestic table and European qualification is still in sight.<\/p>\n
Charles is a local product, born and raised in Manchester after 12 years on the Etihad Campus with Manchester City. He made one first-team appearance for City before departing in 2023 to Southampton, at a time when current United director of football Jason Wilcox was in charge at the Saints. The 22-year-old Northern Ireland international, eligible through his mother, is valued at $26.5 million (\u00a320 million).<\/p>\n
Last season Charles did not feature for Southampton in the Premier League despite being part of the promotion campaign; a change of system restricted his opportunities and he spent the season on loan at Sheffield Wednesday. He has returned to Southampton as they pursue promotion again. In the FA Cup on Saturday he was a second-half substitute as the Saints knocked Arsenal out, and he scored the late winning goal.<\/p>\n
If United formalise interest in Charles they would face competition from Everton and two other unnamed Premier League clubs. Rangers would like to be involved but cannot financially compete with the English clubs.<\/p>\n
Ugarte\u2019s Manchester United career has not gone to plan. He emerged at Sporting CP as a lynchpin of Ruben Amorim\u2019s successful team, moved to Paris Saint-Germain for significant money, produced a strong start that later faded, yet still attracted United interest in the summer of 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Man Utd monitor Shea Charles as a budget midfield target if Manuel Ugarte leaves this summer. option<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513,179,1163],"tags":[216,1416,1047],"class_list":["post-11079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd-transfer-news","category-manchester-united","category-transfers","tag-adam-wharton","tag-budget-picks","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}