Manchester United 'agree €120m fee for Paul Pogba' - report

Earlier on Wednesday, Sky Italia and The Guardian had claimed that the Italian champions had refused an opening offer of £85 million (€101m), which came with £15m (€18m) of performance bonuses attached which could have raised it to £100m in total.

Juventus were reportedly insisting on a basic fee of £101m (€120m), plus a further £8m (€10m) in add-ons.

Reputable French daily L'Equipe now report United have agreed to that counter-offer and are ready to stump up the £101m (€120m).

That would see Pogba’s fee exceed that of current record-holder Gareth Bale, who cost Real Madrid €100.8m when he moved from Tottenham Hotspur in 2013.

The Sun had earlier reported that the 23-year-old had agreed terms on a £220,000-a-week deal over five years.

Pogba, 23, has won four successive Italian league titles with Juventus.

Should he join United, he would become a third high-profile recruit by new manager Jose Mourinho, after Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

L’Equipe are almost always right when they break these types of stories. Furthermore, the journalist who has broken the news, Bilel Ghazi, knows Pogba well and his stories on the France squad tend to be very accurate. This is a very solid story.

No, clearly not, but the market is crazy nowadays.

Of course, he is a great player and at 23-years-old is still very young but he isn’t one of the best players in the world currently. His displays at the Euros sum him up: he has huge potential but is not the finished article.

However, Pogba is the new marketing figurehead for Adidas so that might explain the fee.

The fee is huge. However, United can absolutely afford it due to their astronomical revenue streams. So, the question is do United need him? The answer to that question is a resounding yes. They need him and they can afford him, so this deal makes absolute sense from a United point of view.

He will provided the guile and dynamism that was so abundantly absent from United last season. His signing could prove transformative. Of course he will make United a better side but his arrival says much for United’s standing in the game. It reinforces the view that after a few years in the doldrums, they are officially back. They have an elite manager and are signing elite level players.