‘Why not?’: BBC pundit can’t believe Manchester United haven’t signed 24-year-old Arsenal player

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Manchester United haven’t got their recruitment right in recent years.

That much is obvious.

Flop after flop has been signed by the Red Devils, while top targets have gone on to shine elsewhere.

Just this summer, Kim Min-Jae and Harry Kane slipped through United’s grasp, while Declan Rice, a supposed long-term target, ended up at Arsenal.

Speaking on the BBC Radio Five Football Daily Podcast, Michael Brown and Mark Chapman have been debating why United have failed to sign many of their top targets, and Brown questioned why Rice didn’t end up at Old Trafford.

Why hasn’t Rice signed?

Brown and Chapman discussed United’s failure to land top targets.

“How could they allow in their situation for Kim to leave Napoli and go to Bayern? Kane to be on their doorstep and go to Bayern? Ten Hag and the players catch all of this, but it runs deeper than that because they need to sign those types of players. How can they sit there and watch Declan Rice when they have a massive hole in the midfield. There are players they were linked with, they were on their doorstep, they were available, and they’ve not been able to sign any of these players,” Chapman said.

“The Kane one was a bit more difficult due to the situation, I’ll give them that one, but with Declan Rice you’re sort of going ‘well, why not?’” Brown said.

Why would he sign?

The question isn’t why haven’t United signed Rice? The question is, why would Rice want to sign for Manchester United.

The former West Ham man had his pick of clubs this summer with Man City and Arsenal both after him, and, to be honest, United aren’t as appealing as either of those two these days.

Arsenal are building something special under Mikel Arteta, City are the treble-winning champions of Europe, while disaster is never too far away at Old Trafford these days.

United may, simply, not have the pull to compete with the top clubs in the transfer market nowadays.