Top News

French football expert Julien Laurens has raised questions over how Liverpool and Manchester United failed to sign Mamadou Sangare before his summer transfer to Brentford.

Sangare joined Brentford in a club-record deal worth around £41m after shining for Lens in Ligue 1 last season.

The Mali midfielder was included in the Ligue 1 Team of the Year after helping Lens qualify for the Champions League, and he also ranked second in the French top flight for tackles won.

Sangare has made a superb start to life at Brentford, and Laurens has admitted he is puzzled that bigger clubs chose not to move for the midfielder.

Manchester United and Liverpool are believed to have monitored Sangare last season, but neither club turned that interest into a formal approach.

Laurens feels both clubs may now be regretting that call and said he cannot understand why Sangare was overlooked, with the French pundit backing him to become the Premier League's signing of the season.

"The signing of the season will be [Mamadou] Sangare," Laurens said on James Allcott's The Ripple Effect.

"Maybe there's a thing here, where there's a pattern that the big clubs in England think you might not be ready; let's let him go into this mid-platform, and even if we have to spend £80m instead of £50m or £45m, we will do that.

"He was in all of our Ligue 1 Team of the Season. He was outstanding. He was, by far, the best midfielder in Ligue 1 outside of the Paris Saint-Germain midfield.

"It's impossible that a club like Liverpool, who I think would need him badly, or a club like [Manchester] United, all of those top clubs, that their scouts did nothing.

"You only had to go to Lens once and see him play, and you knew there was a player there. I'm not really sure what happened, but well done to Brentford for getting him. The data was incredible."