Manchester United have moved quickly into what have been described as “advanced talks” to sign Aston Villa midfielder Youri Tielemans. The Belgian is available for a fee reported at \u00a335 million because of a release clause in his Aston Villa contract. That figure is presented against the backdrop of \u00c9derson\u2019s \u00a335 million fee, which was set to be inflated by small add-ons, and Tielemans is noted to be two years older than \u00c9derson.<\/p>\n
Tielemans brings nearly 250 Premier League appearances since 2019 for two clubs. He was central to Leicester City achieving four straight top-eight finishes and later played an active role in Aston Villa\u2019s emergence. He also scored the winner in the 2021 FA Cup final. The midfielder is described as an accomplished passer, a ball winner and a long-distance shooter.<\/p>\n
With the signing of Andrey Santos from Chelsea, Manchester United could finish the window with two new midfielders for approximately the same outlay Tottenham Hotspur paid for Mateus Fernandes.<\/p>\n
A separate, practical question for any move is squad number. Tielemans has worn 8 routinely for Belgium since 2018, took 8 at Leicester in the summer of 2019 and has worn it at Aston Villa since 2023. At Old Trafford, however, that number belongs to Bruno Fernandes.<\/p>\n
Tielemans has used a range of other numbers in his career: 31 at Anderlecht, 17 at Monaco, and he began his Leicester career in the 21 shirt after his January 2019 winter transfer. His early Belgium jerseys included 6, 16, 17, 18 and 24. With Casemiro\u2019s departure, 18 is available and it is noted that Fernandes had previously used that shirt before shedding the first digit in 2022.<\/p>\n
Current squad numbers and last worn by:<\/p>\n
9 \u2014 Rasmus H\u00f8jlund
\n12 \u2014 Tyrell Malacia
\n14 \u2014 Christian Eriksen
\n17 \u2014 Alejandro Garnacho
\n18 \u2014 Casemiro
\n20 \u2014 Diogo Dalot
\n21 \u2014 Antony
\n27 \u2014 Wout Weghorst
\n28 \u2014 Facundo Pellistri
\n29 \u2014 Aaron Wan-Bissaka<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tielemans linked with Manchester United; number 8 is taken by Bruno Fernandes, alternatives exist.ok<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,1513],"tags":[983,944,1777],"class_list":["post-17185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-man-utd-transfer-news","tag-agents","tag-andrey-santos","tag-tielemans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17185","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=17185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}