Sky: There’s ‘an expectation’ one Red who’s ‘simply too good’ departs Man Utd in the next two windows

Manchester United fans can expect it’ll be a case of one player out, one player in if a recently reported deal comes to fruition in January. 

That’s because, according to Sky Sports Germany reporter Florian Plettenberg, the Red Devils may have to part ways with Altay Bayindir due to his lack of game time over the last season-and-a-half.

It’s claimed that the goalkeeper is seen as ‘simply too good’ to be spending some of the peak years of his career playing second fiddle to Andre Onana and watching on from the sidelines week in, week out. As a result, there’s now ‘an expectation’ that he will be sold either in January or next summer.

You couldn’t blame him for internally pushing for a move, either. Bayindir has featured only three times since signing from Fenerbahce in a £4.3 million deal in 2023: two times in the League Cup, against Barnsley and Leicester City, and once in the FA Cup against Newport County. 

Bayindir has endured a lacklustre United tenure in Onana’s shadow

Unfortunately for Bayindir, he was acquired at the end of a summer in which United not only bid farewell to five ‘keepers, including David de Gea and Dean Henderson, but they shelled out £47.2 million to bring Onana in from Inter Milan, establishing from the get-go that he would be the No.1 between the sticks. 

United are said to be ‘very satisfied’ with the 26-year-old, whose contract runs until 2027, but accepts why he is feeling aggrieved with how his Old Trafford tenure has played out. It remains to be seen if Ruben Amorim would utilise him in the Carabao Cup quarter-final against Tottenham Hotspur on December 19 or the third-round FA Cup tie away to Arsenal in early January – if Bayindir is still at the club by then, of course.

Plettenberg adds that the Reds ‘are in the market for a new third-choice goalkeeper or potentially both; a new number two and three’.