Manchester United rebuild their midfield as the Ederson deal falls apart
Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans are through the door, the move for Atalanta’s Ederson has collapsed over a medical, and Michael Carrick is still hunting one more midfielder in a busy summer at Old Trafford.
Jul 20, 2026
Manchester United came into this window knowing the midfield was the job that could not wait, and Michael Carrick has spent the first half of it doing exactly that. Two new midfielders are through the door, a third target has slipped away on a failed medical, and the search for one more is still live. It is the clearest sign yet of how Carrick wants to rebuild a team he dragged into the Champions League after taking the job in January.
Santos and Tielemans in
Andrey Santos was the first to arrive, joining from Chelsea on July 13 for a fee in the region of 48 million pounds plus a further two million in add-ons. The 22-year-old Brazilian never really got a run at Stamford Bridge despite a standout loan season at Strasbourg in France, and United have moved early to make him a first-team player rather than a project. He became the opening signing of the Carrick era proper.
Barely 24 hours later he had company. United triggered the release clause in Youri Tielemans’ Aston Villa contract, worth around 35 million pounds, to bring in a very different kind of midfielder. Where Santos is 22 and still to prove himself in the Premier League, Tielemans is 29, a Belgium international with more than a decade of senior football behind him and a reputation for controlling games rather than driving through them. The pairing looks deliberate: one for now, one for the next few years.
The Ederson deal that got away
The one that did not happen was arguably the one United wanted most. They had a deal agreed in principle for the Atalanta and Brazil midfielder Ederson, around 35 million pounds rising with add-ons, before the medical unpicked it. Tests in the United States flagged a concern, and a fuller examination in England, carried out after Brazil’s World Cup ended, centred on the 27-year-old’s knee and a previous meniscus problem. United decided not to proceed on the agreed terms.
Ederson has since signed a contract extension with Atalanta, which tells you the Italian club expected to lose him and now do not. United have not entirely closed the door on a revised deal at a lower price, but for a club that has been burned before by expensive players with fragile knees, walking away looks like the sober call rather than a missed opportunity.
Still shopping for a third
Two signings might have been enough in a normal summer. This is not a normal summer for United’s midfield, where Manuel Ugarte is carrying an injury and Kobbie Mainoo cannot be asked to carry the creative load on his own. Carrick is understood to want one more, ideally a ball-winner who lets Tielemans and Mainoo push higher up the pitch.
The names doing the rounds fit that brief. Roma’s Manu Kone brings height and physicality, Brighton’s Carlos Baleba is younger and rawer but full of promise, and Crystal Palace’s Adam Wharton offers the passing range United have lacked in the deeper role. None is close yet, and after the Ederson experience United will want the medical signed off before anyone gets excited. For now the rebuild is two-thirds done, and the shape of Carrick’s midfield is already easier to picture than it was a month ago.