Man Utd Confident Of Landing Zaha Despite Tottenham Opening Talks

With the January transfer window now open for business we’ll be keeping you up-to-date with all the latest football news and transfer gossip. Today, more on the future of Wilfried Zaha.

Manchester United are confident they will beat Tottenham Hotspur to the signing of Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha, according to the Daily Mail.

The report claims Spurs have made the first move to land they exciting youngster by opening official talks with Palace over a potential deal, with the Premier League club said to be starting the bidding at around £7m as well as including performance based add-ons.

Andre Villas-Boas is also understood to be willing to loan the player back to the Championship side for the rest of the season to help in their bid to gain promotion back to the Premier League.

However, the Mail suggest that United chief executive David Gill is now ready to make his move after returning from his holiday’s and boss Sir Alex Ferguson is said to be keen on speaking directly with the 20-year-old if a deal can be agreed between the two clubs.

The newspaper suggests that Fergie is confident he will be able to persuade the England attacker his future is at Old Trafford and while the Scot wants Zaha immediately, it’s understood he may be prepared to wait as he did in the past when signing Chris Smalling from Fulham.

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The ‘race’ to land Zaha is just hotting up and it will be interesting to see how this pans out. Tottenham will be able to offer him the chance to stay in London, which could prove to be key in any potential deal, but it will be difficult for him to turn down the chance to join a club like United.

Palace are likely to favour any deal that includes loaning Zaha back to them for the rest of the season and I feel this would be best for the player as well. He’s unlikely to get much playing time at any big Premier League club yet so I think it would benefit the player if he was allowed to see-out the season playing games regularly with Palace before linking up with his new club in the summer.

But until a deal is stuck, Zaha remains a Crystal Palace player. Let’s see how things develop in the coming days and weeks.

Where do you think Zaha will end up? Get involved in the comments section below.