United sign £17m De Gea

Manchester United have agreed a five-year contract with David De Gea, who joins the Premier League champions for around £17 million.

The Spanish goalkeeper moves from Atletico Madrid, and becomes United's third major signing of the summer.

Sir Alex Ferguson has already landed Phil Jones and Ashley Young, and De Gea's arrival pushes his spending to the £50m mark.

"I feel very proud and I can’t wait to start playing here," said De Gea. "When a club the size of Manchester United comes in for you it obviously makes you very, very happy.

"I saw their interest as an extra motivation to work even harder to show off my ability. It’s a great privilege to be part of a club like United and I'm keen to do my best and show what I can do."

The 20-year-old, who passed a medical earlier this week, faces the challenge of replacing recently-retired Dutchman Edwin van der Sar.

De Gea, who came through the youth ranks at Atletico before making his La Liga debut in 2009, arrives at Old Trafford fresh from helping Spain to win the Euro Under-21 championship in Denmark last week.

Ferguson, who has spoken previously of the desire to sign an adequate replacement for Van der Sar in good time, targeted one of the continent's best young goalkeeping talents in De Gea.

When Danish goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel quit Old Trafford in 1999 the club struggled for six years to sign someone of a similar calibre, eventually settling on Van der Sar having passed up the chance to snap him up from Ajax years earlier.

Knowing the Dutchman planned to retire at the end of last season, when United won a record 19th English league title, Ferguson learnt from past mistakes and had already begun preparing for his top keeper's departure.

He signed 27-year-old Dane Anders Lindegaard last November and De Gea will now compete with him and Van der Sar's previous deputy Tomasz Kuszscak for the number one spot between the posts.

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Ashley Young semakin hampir ke Old Trafford

Aston Villa winger Ashley Young should be a Manchester United player in the next 48 hours.
The Sun says Young will officially become a Manchester United player by the end of the week, after undergoing a medical on Wednesday.
The £20million Aston Villa winger was snapped yesterday arriving at United's Carrington training base dressed in a red hoodie and jeans, before he headed for tests with the club's medical team.
Young, 25, will pick up around £130,000 a week, after opting for Old Trafford ahead of Liverpool. His signing follows Phil Jones' £16.5m arrival from Blackburn.

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Andre Villas-Boas: 10 things you need to know about prospective new Chelsea manager

who is the 33-year-old wonderkid, formerly a close associate of Jose Mourinho during his spell with the Blues? Read on and find out...

1) Born on October 17 1977, Luís André Pina Cabral Villas-Boas speaks perfect English, having been taught the language by his dad’s mum Margaret Kendall. Her own mother moved to Portugal from the Stockport suburb of Cheadle to start a wine business in the early years of the 20 century.
2) Married with two children, Villas-Boas comes from a wealthy background, with a count and a baron among his relatives.

3) A schoolboy midfielder who realised he would never be good enough to play the game at a high level, Villas-Boas planned a career in sports journalism before famously getting his start in coaching through the late, great Sir Bobby Robson, a friend of his grandma. He explained: "When Mr Bobby Robson came to Porto to be a coach in 1994 he moved into my building. I was a small boy, but because I was so interested in football I went to his flat to try to meet him. He liked my passion so helped me to enrol at Lilleshall. I shouldn't really have been there, because the law doesn't allow a minor to take qualifications. I was the youngest coach there by a mile, but I was so determined to make it that it didn't bother me.”
4) Villas-Boas was still only 21 when he became the British Virgin Islands' technical director of football in 2000 – not that the tiny country’s FA were aware of that. He said: “I was a kid, but they didn't know that. I only told them my age the day I left the post.” The Portuguese was in charge for a 14-1 defeat in Bermuda during qualifying for the 2002 World Cup in which then-Manchester City striker Shaun Goater scored five goals.
5) Jose Mourinho became Villas-Boas’ second mentor when he joined Porto as coach in 2002. He have the youngster a job as ‘head of opposition observation’ and by the time the pair arrived at Chelsea, the Special One was calling his assistant “my ears and eyes”. Villas-Boas immediately endeared himself to first team players by providing individual DVDs on their direct opponent in each forthcoming game, detailing their rivals’ strengths and weaknesses.
6) Redhead Villas-Boas was renowned as one of the most volatile of Mourinho’s Chelsea’s assistants – at times even more controversial than the boss himself. Frank Rijkaard is alleged to have taken a swing at him following one of the Blues’ epically bad-tempered clashes with Barcelona, and it was Villas-Boas who claimed to have seen referee Rijkaard approaching Frisk three times during half-time in their February 2005 Champions League first leg. Mourinho was banned from the second leg after repeating the allegation. Villas-Boas has never been backward about coming forward – it’s claimed that the only reason the youngster talked to Bobby Robson was to slate him for dropping his Porto hero as a schoolboy, Domingos Paciencia.
7) Villas-Boas also worked with Mourinho at Inter Milan but the pair are thought to be no longer speaking, for reasons Villas-Boas will not disclose. He says: “We have different personalities and different views towards the game. I respect José, but don’t want to be a Mourinho clone. I want to be able to work freely, without restraint, without worrying what he thinks.”
8) Villas-Boas quit Inter in October 2009 for his first role as a club No.1, with struggling Academia De Coimbra. Rock-bottom at the time and winless in their first seven games of the season, he led them to a comfortable 11 place finish in a 16-team league and into the semi-finals of the Portuguese Cup. He was such an instant success that less than two months into his reign, Sporting Lisbon tried to poach him to be their coach in the 2010/11 season. But he preferred to return to Porto.
9) Villa-Boas’ record-breaking season at Porto last term saw them become the first-ever European club to twice win a treble of domestic league, cup and a European trophy. Victory in the Europa League also made him the youngest coach ever to win a major European competition.
10) Villas-Boas plays a more fluid and attacking version of Mourinho’s famous 4-3-3 in which wingers are encouraged to get forward and support strikers and full backs give license to cross the halfway line.

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