Tottenham may reportedly have been handed a boost in their transfer pursuit of Mateus Fernandes as Manchester United seem prepared to walk away from the deal.

West Ham United are said to be asking for £80m for Fernandes, but Man Utd view that as too expensive, and could explore Alex Scott as an alternative instead, according to iNews.

Want more CaughtOffside coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust

Fernandes has shone for West Ham and looks like an obvious candidate to be sold this summer as he surely won’t want to stay with the Hammers now that they’re playing in the Championship.

The talented young Portugal international looks like he could do a job for a number of bigger clubs, and he’d surely help United replace the departing Casemiro.

Still, it seems they’re ready to look at alternatives, so that could be good news for Tottenham.

Mateus Fernandes would apparently prefer Manchester United

This is less good news for Fernandes himself, though, with previous reports suggesting that the 21-year-old would prefer a move to Old Trafford if possible.

That’s what’s been claimed by Andy Mitten on the Talk of the Devils podcast on YouTube, even if he acknowledged that Fernandes could be open to joining Spurs if a move to United doesn’t work out.

DOWNLOAD THE OFFICIAL CAUGHTOFFSIDE APP FOR ALL THE LATEST & BREAKING UPDATES – STRAIGHT TO YOUR PHONE! ON APPLE & GOOGLE PLAY

MUFC should surely do all they can to bring in this top talent who wants to play for them, but sometimes it isn’t as simple as that, and they also need to be careful about over-spending again.

This has long been an issue for the Red Devils in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, with a number of their most expensive signings proving to be major flops, such as Angel Di Maria, Paul Pogba, Antony, and Jadon Sancho.

Fernandes maybe doesn’t quite look like an £80m player yet, but this is a market in which midfielders look like moving for huge money, with Nottingham Forest bagging as much as £116m from the sale of Elliot Anderson to Manchester City, according to BBC Sport and others.