Youngster Mitchel set to go on loan to Hearts

UNITED youngster Demetri Mitchell is expected to join Hearts on loan until the end of the season.

Mitchell, now 21, has not featured in a single matchday squad for United this term and is set to get regular playing time with the fifth-placed Scottish Premiership club.

United recently brought a number of U18s into the U23 set-up in anticipation of some second-string regulars leaving.

Mitchell is expected to become the second U23 regular to head out on loan this month after James Wilson joined Championship club Sheffield United.

Mitchell has started all 13 of United’s Premier League 2 fixtures this season at left-back or on the left wing and Hearts manager Craig Levein recently admitted the club needed a wide option.

“We do need speed in the wider areas, that’s for sure,” Levein said. “We need a leftback and other things as well.”

Academy head Nicky Butt converted one-time forward Mitchell, pictured, into a left-back last term and the Mancunian earned a first-team debut on the final day of last season against Crystal Palace.

His adaptation to his new role convinced manager Jose Mourinho to include Mitchell in United’s pre-season squad, with Luke Shaw, Ashley Young and Marcos Rojo all sidelined through injury.

Mitchell came on against the LA Galaxy, Salt Lake City and Valerenga before he dropped back into the reserves for the start of the campaign.

United have cooled their interest in signing a left-back due to an improvement in the resurgent Shaw’s attitude and application over the past month.

Mourinho and his staff will monitor his progress between now and the end of the season before deciding on Shaw’s future.

Mitchell could make his debut in the Edinburgh derby against Hibernian in Sunday’s Scottish Cup tie. AS Jose Mourinho uttered the names of four peripheral Paris Saint-Germain players it felt inevitable United would be linked with one the following week.

“What Paris Saint Germain did this season with Neymar and Mbappe, they get two of probably the four best attacking players in the world – they get two at the same time,” Mourinho said during his transfer sermon.

“And then players like [Angel] Di Maria, [Julian] Draxler, [Javier] Pastore, Lucas, they are second choices. Money makes a difference.”

Would United settle for a ‘second choice’ player? Lucas Moura is not even that at the Parc des Princes. The 25-year-old has made six appearances this season and they have all come off the bench. His last start was in May and PSG coach Unai Emery has omitted him from 15 of their 29 matchday squads.

Moura was named on the bench for PSG’s last Ligue 1 match at Cannes on December 20 but was omitted from the cup squads against Rennes and Amiens over the last week, amid speculation he could leave this month. A Brazilian with 79 New Barcelona signing Philippe Coutinho minutes of football midway through the season approaching a World Cup needs to move on.

PSG have identified United as the possible takers. European clubs have capitalised on Ed Woodward’s transfer rhetoric and United’s kamikaze spending over the past four years to inflate the prices of their own players, regardless of whether United are interested or not.

In the summer, PSG overstated United’s non-existent interest in Serge Aurier to smoke out an actual bidder in Tottenham. Monaco attempted a similar trick to obtain a fee for Thomas Lemar, Real Madrid did it with James Rodriguez and Bayern Munich with Renato Sanches. All of them left, bar Lemar.

United are maybe still smarting from their attempt to sign him as a 19-year-old in 2012, when Sir Alex Ferguson’s late confidant Bob Cass confidently wrote that deal was imminent. United offered Sao Paulo £35m but were gazumped by nouveau riche PSG and had their second transfer coup in a summer Zlatan Ibrahimovic arrived.

From a reputational perspective, United should perhaps give Moura a swerve. If they resort to recruiting an unloved PSG player with six substitute appearances to his name, they will have yielded to the Qatariowned JOSE Mourinho has had his run-ins with Barcelona – but the Catalan giants may have come to his aid just in the nick of time.

Mourinho’s gripes about United’s spending in recent weeks have garnered little sympathy – understandably so. But Barca’s £142m move for Philippe Coutinho is a stark reminder of what club’s brazen ploy, one they avoided with Aurier, Rodriguez and Sanches. They would also have not learnt from the opportunistic loan move for Radamel Falcao threeand-a-half years ago. Moura may merely view United as a stepping stone to the World Cup.

And even then Moura is not an established Brazilian international. His last appearance for the selecao was a 14-minute cameo against Ecuador in the 2016 Copa America, where his squad inclusion was only made possible by Rafinha’s late injury. United have fielded popular (Rafael da Silva) and portly (Anderson) Brazilians without anyone from South America’s largest country succeeding at Old Trafford.

Yet Moura’s low stock does not match his ability. Ferguson was prepared to break United’s transfer record to sign him and he would have become the first player United had spent over £30m on since Dimitar Berbatov in 2008.

Moura struck 16 goals last season and 12 the season before that and Mourinho is up against if he wants to return them to the pinnacle of European football.

Leading La Liga by nine points, they don’t need the Brazilian for their domestic ambitions this term. And as he’s ineligible for the Champions League, he’s no use to them in Europe.

Simply put, Barca didn’t need to sign Coutinho in January. But they did – because they are Barcelona. his situation at PSG is skewed by unprecedented spending. Then there is the Mourinho factor. Playing under a Portuguese speaker, surrounded by Portuguese staff and Latino players, would be a huge benefit to Moura and the Iberian faction in the United squad has thrived during Mourinho’s tenure. Moura would also have a playing mentor to guide him in Ibrahimovic, whom he played with for four years in France. The right wing has emerged as a problem position for United and Moura would be the purest winger in a squad bereft of natural flankers. Moura’s positioning on the right would not tread on the toes of left-sided options Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial, either, and United’s attack would be quicker. Whether it be a six-month loan or a permanent deal, in the post-Neymar market Moura is a cost-efficient gamble maybe worth taking. And he wouldn’t be second choice. Samuel Luckhurst Because they are determined to make Spain’s best, better. And because they are thinking about the long term.

Anticipating Real Madrid spending heavily to reassert themselves at the end of the season, Pep Guardiola’s intention to turn City’s Premier League dominance to European glory, and also Paris St Germain’s next move after turning the world transfer