Man Utd will have a meeting with Chelsea this week in an effort to drive down their demands for Mason Mount, according to reports.
The Red Devils have already made three bids in an attempt to convince the Blues to accept their advances but Chelsea have rejected them all so far.
Their latest offer was worth a reported £55m but it has been claimed that the Stamford Bridge outfit are holding out for as much as £65m, a figure which the Red Devils claim includes ‘United tax’.
And the Daily Telegraph now insists that Man Utd ‘will hold talks with Chelsea this week over their bid to sign’ Mount after the Blues ‘suggested a face-to-face meeting over the situation as they countered the offer with a demand for £65m’.
Man Utd say they ‘will not go near’ that valuation, with the England international only having one year left on his contract and coming off the back of a season of largely average performances.
However, the thing the Red Devils are ‘thought to be willing to negotiate’ is ‘the structure and finer points of their £55 million bid’.
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The Daily Telegraph add:
‘United still hope that they might be able to negotiate an agreement in time for Mount not to have to return for pre-season training at all at Chelsea, even though the midfielder will report for work at Cobham if no agreement is found.’
Liverpool were also reportedly in the race to sign Mount earlier in this month and Caught Offside‘s Liverpool correspondent Neil Jones has given a detailed explanation as to why Jurgen Klopp’s side pulled out.
Jones said: “While it might all be about Mason Mount and Manchester United now, I can confidently say that Liverpool were very interested in the Chelsea midfielder earlier this summer.
“He’s actually a player who’s long been on Liverpool’s radar, going back to when he was playing at youth level and there was a possibility that they could’ve signed him when he was about 16 or 17, but unfortunately it never materialised.
“There was, as I understand it, the genuine belief that there was a chance of signing Mount from Chelsea this summer, looking at his contract situation and the general state of Chelsea’s squad and the need for players to be sold this summer.
“I’m told Liverpool felt they had a genuine chance of getting him, but it then became clear that the big issue would be that Chelsea were asking for a lot of money for a player with just a year left on his contract. The player also made it clear that if he was to move, Manchester United would be the club he preferred. From that point, Liverpool walked away and put themselves out of the picture.
“Looking at how things have progressed since then, I think there’ll be some relief that they did walk away, because it looks like United are going to end up paying a lot for him.
“With Chelsea managing to offload a number of players like Kai Havertz, Mateo Kovacic, and the likes of Kalidou Koulibaly, Hakim Ziyech and Edouard Mendy to Saudi Arabia, there’s less of a need now for Chelsea to sell Mount for a fee they have to heavily compromise on.
“I certainly don’t see Liverpool coming back in for Mount, I could be proven wrong, but if the asking price stays at over £50m, I just don’t see Liverpool being in the mix. I think it’s now down to United and Chelsea to find a compromise, and from what I’m hearing it might not be too far away now anyway.”