Following the departures of Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand, United have a gaping hole in the centre of their defence that needs to be filled this summer. The likes of Jonny Evans, Chris Smalling and Phil Jones cannot be trusted at this stage of their careers to take their place and van Gaal needs to bring in like-for-like quality to plug the gap. A dream signing for the club this summer would be Mats Hummels. The Borussia Dortmund centre-half has just won the World Cup with his native Germany and looked rock solid during the tournament in Brazil, forming part of a watertight defence that kept four clean sheets. Rumour has it that United are close to securing a deal with Dortmund for the highly-rated 25-year-old and he would be the ideal replacement for either Ferdinand or Vidic. Hummels has big-game experience having also played in a Champions League final and knows what it's like to be in a title run-in having helped his club to back-to-back Bundesliga titles in 2010-11 and 2011-12.
Joseph is an accredited football journalist and has interviewed nearly all of the current 20 Barclay's Premier League managers. He is also a correspondent for Bleacher Report and has written for Caught Offside and Give Me Football.
