Haaland and five players Rangnick could try to sign at Man Utd

Stefan Bienkowski

• 29 Nov 2021 07:30 CST
• 4 min read

Ral Rangnick has undoubtedly been hired by Manchester United to first and foremost get the best out of the club’s star-studded squad.

However, once Rangnick puts the Old Trafford side back on the path to success, he’ll then be expected to weave his magic in the transfer market and help Man Utd build a squad that can challenge for the Premier League and Champions League for years to come.

As such, the German manager will be relying heavily on his network of contracts and scouts, as well as his extensive experience in German football. Here are the players he’ll most likely look to target in the coming years.

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Erling Haaland

The No.1 target that Man Utd fans will hope Rangnick can now convince to move to Old Trafford will be none other than Erling Haaland.

The Borussia Dortmund striker is undoubtedly one of - if not the most - promising players in world football and is scoring goals for fun in the Bundesliga this season.

However, while Man Utd may have deeper pockets than most, reports in Germany have for some time suggested the towering striker would instead prefer a move to Real Madrid.

That may be about to change, if Rangnick can convince Haaland that Man Utd will be a force to be reckoned with under his watch and will be the very best place for his development.

Amadou Haidara

Another player that could be of huge use to Man Utd is young RB Leipzig midfielder Amadou Haidara.

Rangnick has certainly played his part in the young talent’s career to date, overseeing Haidara’s move to Red Bull Salzburg and then his next step up to the Bundesliga in 2019.

As such, the German tactician will know exactly what Haidara brings to the table and what he could offer a Man Utd midfield that is sorely lacking world-class box-to-box talent.

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Karim Adeyemi

If Man Utd are too late to convince Haaland to make the move to Manchester then they could instead turn their attention to Red Bull Salzburg forward Karim Adeyemi.

Since leaving Bayern Munich’s youth academy as a teenager, Adeyemi has slowly but surely developed into one of Austrian football’s brightest prospects and is now top of the shopping list for a number of Bundesliga sides.

Rather than wait a few years and spend €70 million signing him from Dortmund, Man Utd should use Rangnick’s insight and contacts to snap up the young striker now and embed him within the club’s first team.

Jude Bellingham

While Jude Bellingham has never played for any of Rangnick’s clubs, he’ll undoubtedly be a talent that the German manager knows all about.

Few in the Bundesliga have shone quite as bright as the England international since he made the move to Dortmund and Rangnick will be well aware of what Bellingham could bring to Man Utd’s faltering midfield.

Add to that the manager’s extensive experience with Dortmund and it would certainly seem as though Man Utd could now be in pole position to sign a player they narrowly missed on when he was still at Birmingham City.

Emile Smith Rowe

Long before Emile Smith Rowe was winning games for Arsenal he was on loan at RB Leipzig, under the careful study of Rangnick.

Smith Rowe spent the 2018/19 campaign at the Bundesliga side and Rangnick later revealed that he tried to bring the English playmaker back to the club in the following season.

That never happened. But now at Man Utd, the German manager now has the means to not only buy the midfielder but also entice him to a club with better prospects of winning serious silverware.