Manchester United Transfer News: Anthony Martial Deal Rated Above Edinson Cavani

Manchester United are poised to make AS Monaco’s Anthony Martial the most expensive teenager in football history on the final day of the transfer window and former player Phil Neville thinks the young Frenchman will go on to be well worth the money.

Neville, now a coach at Valencia, saw Martial in the flesh during his side’s recent clash with the principality club in the Champions League qualifying matches. The ex-defender thinks he’ll prove to be a better investment than an experienced forward like Paris Saint-Germain’s Edinson Cavani, per Chris Wheeler of the Daily Mail:

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He was unplayable at times. He has strength, pace, everything you could look for. He kept drifting out to the left and causing us problems. He’s a proper centre-forward. Every time he got the ball your heart was in your mouth. He was really good in both games, especially at the Mestalla.

He’s a proper signing and I think he’s a better bet than spending the same on Edinson Cavani or someone similar.

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As noted in Wheeler’s piece, the Red Devils are set to shell out an initial £36 million for the 19-year-old star, but eventually the fee could top a whopping £58 million. Bleacher Report's Sam Tighe took a look at why Neville and so many others rate Martial so highly:

While Martial isn’t at Cavani’s level yet, in the long term he has the talent to scale similar heights. The Monaco man has everything in place to become a world-class player, but so often these prodigious stars can be knocked off course and never quite achieve their potential.

So it means the Red Devils are banking on Martial’s prodigious ability in this deal. As we can see here courtesy of Duncan Alexander of OptaJoe, he's still relatively unproven:

Cavani is a player that would have probably cost a similar overall sum and someone who would have come in to make a much more immediate impact. The Uruguayan is a more refined forward, a player who has played at the very highest level and has scored goals on a regular basis in two of European football’s top leagues.

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For a club like United, who demand success, if they were on the hunt for trophies this season, he could have been the man to go for. Indeed, according to Jamie Jackson of the Guardian, Cavani was the club’s main target after the sale of Robin van Persie. But it’s clear they’re looking to explore other, more youthful avenues instead.

Bleacher Report’s Rob Blanchette is concerned that even with Martial, the club’s current attacking options don’t have it in them to fire the Red Devils to silverware:

Martial has an immense amount of raw ability and the nine Ligue 1 goals he scored in the previous term point to a player who knows where the back of the net is, per WhoScored.com. But his attributes are malleable ones and it’ll be up to manager Louis van Gaal to nurture the Frenchman appropriately and ensure this stratospheric fee is not a weight around his neck.

In a couple of years Martial may be ready to spearhead United’s title charge, but he’s not there yet. And while it’s encouraging to see United investing for the future, the fee paid for the teenager is undoubtedly obscene and is unlikely to enrich the chances of short-term glory that this club’s fanbase craves.