Sir Alex Ferguson has denied pursuing Wesley Sneijder, rejecting widespread reports that Manchester United are close to a deal for the Internazionale playmaker.
Although no formal offer has been received by the Italian club, the United chief executive David Gill is reported to have been in contact with parties close to Sneijder, and to have received assurances that the player would be open to a move. And while the Inter director Marco Branca has insisted that the Holland international is "not for sale", there is a sense in Italy that the club's owner Massimo Moratti could yet be tempted to cash in on a player who is not ideally suited to the new manager Gian Piero Gasperini's preferred tactical system.
Ferguson, however, has rejected all suggestions of a move for Sneijder. "I keep reading about this, there's absolutely nothing at all to that [reports of United's interest in the player]," he told ESPN Soccernet Press Pass. "First of all I don't think Inter are prepared to sell him anyway.
"You get conjecture and you get speculation every week in newspapers unfortunately. And we have to answer these for some reason - why, I don't know, but we have to find a reason without adding insult to any particular club, or embarrassing any particular player. There's nothing we can do about it."
Sneijder, 27, is under contract at Inter until 2015, and if the Italian club were to sell they would likely demand a fee more than twice as big as the €16m they paid when signing him from Real Madrid in 2009. The player, too, would expect to at least maintain his salary of roughly £190,000 per week.
Those wages, though, have been cited as another possible reason why Inter might be prepared to do business, as they look to reduce their outgoings to stay in line with Uefa's Financial Fair Play requirements. Palermo's Javier Pastore, and São Paulo's Casemiro have been linked with the club as potential replacements should Sneijder depart.