Shakesy
WW Head of Recruiting
For all we know Utd and Barca agreed a fee, communicated it to the press and then Barca said, "Now, on to the matter of his deferred wages..."How do you figure? He would have got the assurances he required from de Jong or his agent. Once he's got them, that's all he needs. It's upto de Jong and Barca to sort their issues. That's nothing to do with Ten Hag or United.
There is just no possible way United would be staying involved with this if there was no assurances the player wants to come, as much as people are convinced otherwise. Ten Hag isn't stupid, and he wouldn't piss the board off in his first season, as they'd seriously question him if it turned out that they were blindly pushing for a player without knowing his intentions
Ten Hag/Utd might not have known about it.