“Everything is being done to try and leave this winter,” a source close to the Algerian left-back told the French paper, as relayed by Goal. The same message ended with the line now echoing around both sides of the city: the player “cannot remain in this situation where his talent is being wasted.”

Juventus and Everton have been named alongside Manchester United as interested parties. It is the move across town that reads as both the most unlikely and the most explosive.

Sky Germany’s Florian Plettenberg, reported by Football365, has added that personal terms would not be a problem. The main obstacle, according to Plettenberg, is the frosty relationship between the two Manchester clubs.

Rejected on deadline day, back for January

This is not United’s first attempt. They approached Manchester City on deadline day in the summer with a loan offer. City wanted a permanent sale, and the move did not happen.

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Their original target had been Newcastle’s Lewis Hall, who then signed a new contract in September, closing that door. Barcelona’s Alejandro Balde has also been mentioned as a left-back alternative.

United’s recruitment leadership gives the project a strange kind of inside track. CEO Omar Berrada and sporting director Jason Wilcox both previously held senior roles at City, as Goal notes.

168 minutes and a ticking clock

Ait-Nouri joined City from Wolves in the summer of 2025 in a deal reported at around £30m. His first season brought 17 Premier League appearances, enough for a left-back who was never quite first choice.

This season, he has slipped further. He has played 168 minutes across four matches, with Josko Gvardiol and Nico O’Reilly ahead of him in the pecking order under Enzo Maresca, who took over as City head coach in the summer. The Algerian changed agents in October and is now represented by Ali Barat.

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Tevez in 2009, and little else since

Direct transfers between the two Manchester clubs are vanishingly rare. Carlos Tevez’s 2009 switch across the city, the other way, is still the reference point for how toxic such a move can become. City-to-United deals are rarer still.

City are reluctant to do business with United at all, let alone over a player they signed for a significant fee only last year. Their stance has not changed since the summer rejection; Ait-Nouri’s camp is now making its case in public, with the January window the next deadline.

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