News on the grapevine is that Jarrad Branthwaite is yet again the subject of another Manchester United bid as the Manchester club have launched a new move for the center back on Monday night.
The offer, reportedly a package worth up to £50m, is an improvement on the opening bid of £35m plus £8m in add-ons made last month. Yet the ECHO understands it remains short of the club’s valuation of a key player who also happens to be one of Europe’s hottest defensive prospects.
Manchester United’s first bid was made on June 14, the opening day of the summer transfer window, one deemed derisory by Everton and was flatly rejected.
A report by the ECHO states that interest from Old Trafford has not subsided and the new bid had taken almost a month to piece together, with the offer of £45m with a further £5m in add-ons still being deemed some way off the value Everton have placed on a player reported to be of significant importance to Sean Dyche’s plans.
The bid has been made at a point in the summer when the club’s ability to resist below-value offers is at its strongest, something that would favor Everton in their unavoidable need to sell players by June 30 to avoid a third breach of league spending rules – and therefore a third points deduction.
The joint sale of Lewis Dobbin and Ben Godfrey has helped to consolidate the club’s position somewhat, with growing internal optimism that the deals were enough to avoid breaching Profit and Sustainability Regulations (PSR).
That said, Everton still have work to do in order to stay within the PSR parameters of the new financial year and have crucially bought time to plan a strategy for achieving compliance. In other words, this means the club is currently less vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic rivals seeking a quick bargain.