Christian Eriksen's future at Tottenham could be decided over the next few days with the transfer deadline edging ever closer.
Where the Dane will be playing his football over the coming season still remains up in the air despite the fact that he looked a certainty to depart not so long ago.
Eriksen's future was always going to be a massive talking point this summer given he was entering the final year of his contract, yet his comments on international duty in June seemed to indicate that he wouldn't be a Spurs player from the 2019/20 campaign onwards.
Amid previous links to Real Madrid over the past 18 months, Zinedine Zidane instead targeted a move for Manchester United's Paul Pogba to strengthen their midfield, while Donny van de Beek looks set to arrive from Ajax providing they can agree a fee with the Dutch club.
Now it appears that it could be Old Trafford where Eriksen actually heads to as the Red Devils look to bring in an attacking midfielder following talk of Spurs target Bruno Fernandes moving to the club.
According to our colleagues at Manchester Evening News, Spurs are now encouraging their top-six rivals to move for the midfielder over the next 48 hours.
The Lilywhites don't want to lose the player on a free transfer come next summer and it may be a case of cashing in on him now to a rival team, something Daniel Levy would rather not do, instead of either losing him for absolutely nothing or at a knockdown price in January.
Although the transfer window remains open in France, Germany and Spain until Monday, September 2, there's certainly no guarantee at all that the club would be able to sell him to a foreign team.
Said to want around £130million at the end of last season if he was going to be sold to an English club, Solskjaer's side will definitely not get the player on the cheap if he does indeed move north before the deadline.
One thing for certain is that a deal won't be so straightforward either with the clock ticking down.
Manchester United have not bought a player from Spurs since Dimitar Berbatov's move to Old Trafford on deadline day 11 years ago.
The transfer dragged on and Sir Alex Ferguson even said negotiations with Levy were 'more painful than my hip replacement'.
Two years previous the clubs had also finally agreed on a deal for Michael Carrick to move to the Red Devils.
Again, that transfer proved rather problematic before they finally got it over the line.
"I must say negotiations were very difficult and went on for ages," Ferguson told MUTV, as reported by The Mirror.
"I always remember I thought it was done and [former chief executive] David Gill phoned me on the golf course to say they want more. Typical [Spurs chairman] Daniel Levy!
“It was very hard to negotiate but, at the end of the day, we got it through and, ever since he joined us, he’s had a fantastic career."
Spurs cannot afford a player of such quality to depart on a free transfer come next summer and Levy will try and get as much as he can possibly squeeze out of United for the player if he ends his six-year stay in the capital.
As was the case with the Berbatov move back in 2008, this has all the potential to drag on until the final minutes of the transfer window.
