00:00Manchester United have reached an agreement with Italian side Bologna for the transfer of Joshua Xerxe.
00:07The Dutch striker is set to become Manchester United's first signing of the summer transfer window.
00:13He's also set to become the first senior signing of the INEOS regime.
00:18Manchester United have, we understand, agreed to pay just over his release clause
00:23in order to structure the deal a bit more sensibly from their point of view.
00:27Xerxe, as it's well documented, had a 40 million pound euro release clause in his contract this summer.
00:34United have agreed to pay a little bit more, 42.5 million pound euros to get the deal done.
00:41What that means is, if United had paid the release clause, they would have had to pay that all straight away.
00:46Up front, 40 million out of the books this summer.
00:50What they will do now with a 42.5 million pound deal is they will structure it over three years.
00:55So the initial cost for United is far lower than it would have been had they paid his fee initially.
01:01Understand Xerxe will fly to Manchester on Thursday evening.
01:05He will have his medical on Friday and then, who knows when the announcement will be,
01:10it could be as early as the weekend, maybe even next week.
01:13Xerxe, of course, only just finished participating in the European Championship for the Netherlands.
01:18They were knocked out, of course, by England on Wednesday night.
01:21It means that Xerxe would be entitled to three weeks of time off after the conclusion of the International Championship.
01:27So we could see him in time for the later stages of United's pre-season tour in the United States.
01:34But it remains to be seen whether he will take that option up or not.
01:37He only played a minimal role for the Netherlands during Euro 2024.
01:40So we'll keep you posted on that one.
01:42But the headline news is Joshua Xerxe is set to become Manchester United's first signing this summer window.
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