Dougie Freedman has been Crystal Palace's sporting director since 2017 (Photo: PA WIRE) Sir Jim Ratcliffe is reportedly interested in hiring Crystal Palace sporting director Dougie Freedman once his minority takeover of Manchester United is complete.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The British billionaire is set to pay PS1.4billion to take a 25% stake in the Red Devils and a deal could be announced next week.

Ratcliffe wants his group to assume full control of the football operations side of the business and to that end wants to hire a new sporting director to take charge of transfers.

United have spent over a billion on new players over the last decade with little success to show for it and as a result chief executive Richard Arnold and football director John Murtough are 'at risk' of the sack once Ratcliffe arrives.

Various names have been linked with the club, including former Southampton, Tottenham and Monaco man Paul Mitchell, and ex-Liverpool duo Michael Edwards and Julian Ward.

But the Daily Star report that Freedman is also on shortlist, with Ratcliffe said to be a fan of the Palace chief's work, as is Sir Dave Brailsford - the man who will be in charge of overhauling United's transfer department.

Former Scotland international Freedman has a long association with the Eagles, having played for them for 10 years over two spells, before becoming their manager in 2011 and kicking-off their return to the Premier Legaue.

Since then he has been credited with signings such as Marc Guehi, Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise, for relatively low fees, who have all since blossomed into some of the top-flight's best young talents.

Guehi and Eze are England internationals and have been consistently linked with big money moves elsewhere, while Olise came very close to joining Chelsea over the summer before penning a new long-term contract with Palace.

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Freedman's work is also perhaps underrated given that Palace have a net spend of just over PS100m over the last five years, ranking them 15th in the Premier League, yet have never really been troubled by relegation.

The club have a good reputation for making shrewd, bargain transfers, like that of Jordan Ayew and Vicente Guaita and the loan signing of Conor Gallagher.

It remains to be seen whether Freedman, 49, would even be interested in swapping South London for Manchester.

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