The Athletic

Welcome to the Athletic

Welcome to the Athletic Football podcast, I'm Ian Irving.

Coming up today, we attempt to unravel the tangled web of Manchester United's chase for Frankie

De Jong.

We get the very latest on the transfer from Manchester and Bangkok.

Barcelona's finances will dominate the pod, and Phil Hay will join us to talk about

their improving chances of spending some money on leads forward.

Raffinia lookaway Chelsea fans.

Plus, Charlie Eccleshare gives us an update from Tottenham's tour of Korea. Right, it was a weekend of worry then for Manchester United supporters, as yet more detail put down on the club's move for their top transfer target, Frankie DeYoung. Yeah, it's fair to say it's a bit of a tangle web to unweave and join us to try and do that, we hope.

At the athletics, Paul Ballas, who's of course written extensively about the detail of the situation at Barcelona for De Jong.

And also Laurie Whitwell as well, who's out in Thailand on tour with Manchester United,

has just spoken to Eric Tenhaag and watched the team train.

Laurie, I'll get some details on that in a minute,

but first, Paul, this exact situation then with Barcelona, it sounds very, very complicated.

You've detailed it extensively in the piece on the athletic, but can you just give us a sense

of the headlines about what could be holding this up?

Yeah, so basically the headlines is that there's a battle of narrative here because

De Jong, of course, from a football point of view, is a player that Chavi is happy to have

him.

In the club, but his contract situation is exactly what Barca is not looking for right now and

he's trying to run away from.

...