Kane? Mount? Is there any transfer that would make Manchester United fans truly happy?

Lazy to start a piece of writing with a question. Even lazier to do so while in vaguely meta fashion acknowledging it. But anyway. Is there anyone Manchester United could sign this summer that the fans would be happy about?

Because we’re starting to wonder. There seems to be a general air of grumpiness emanating from the United fanbase right now. We thought about it when compiling the Moods. They ought to be happier than they are, really, but the way last season ended really was all rather unsatisfactory.

Despite ticking off what must clearly have been the two primary objectives of the season – winning a thing and getting back in the Champions League – the error United made was in ticking off the first one ages ago in a Carabao Cup final even people who played in it can no longer remember and also by having a top-four spot pretty safely in the bag for most of the second half of the season.

Throw in all that daft quadruple talk – not that any of it actually came from United and almost none of it from fans either – and the season already had a vaguely underwhelming, anti-climactic feel when the Europa League and FA Cup fell by the wayside before City went and emulated the 1999 Treble to piss on United’s remaining lukewarm chips.

And then throw in an increasingly fractious takeover process with a fanbase split down the middle by a potential Qatar-adjacent takeover and it’s all a bit febrile. Especially when the idea gets floated that Qatar might buy Kylian Mbappe from Qatar, further dividing the already divided divisions.

But truthfully is there anyone United could sign that the fans would be happy with? There seems to be a sense that unless the player has been beamed in from outer space they are already damaged goods. We’ve long given up wondering why everyone seems to have it in for Mason Mount, but why do United fans have it in for Mason Mount? He’s good. He’d be really good, you wallies.

You’d think United fans would have learned their lesson after all the doubts about Lisandro Martinez. You’d think we’d have learned our lesson after all our doubts about Casemiro.

And then there’s Harry Kane. The interesting thing with Harry Kane, and this will shock you, is that he’s extraordinarily good at scoring goals. The interesting thing with Manchester United, and this will shock you, is that they have a really good squad that has most bases covered but lacks an elite central striker who is extraordinarily good at scoring goals. They picked Wout Weghorst in 31 games of actual professional first-team football last season.

It would seem like signing Harry Kane is a tip-top idea. But a lot of fans aren’t convinced. He’s nearly 30, which is apparently far more important than the fact he, a player who has never even at 21 relied on pace to be effective, is playing the very best football of his career at 29.

It doesn’t mean it’ll happen or that it’ll definitely work, but there are few transfers that look a surer bet to succeed than Kane to Manchester United. It would probably be the best signing of a 29-year-old elite Premier League-proven striker since Manchester United signed Robin van Persie from the other north London club 11 years ago. A fact that makes the current reticence all the more peculiar.

A lot of it is about transfer fee and Kane’s contract situation. One can understand why this might vex boardroom types, but it’s harder to see why fans should care. It doesn’t really matter that Kane has only one year on his contract if Spurs don’t want to sell; you’re still getting just as good a player. I’ve seen United fans insist they shouldn’t pay a penny over £25m for Kane, a player who is literally the very ideal solution to their most pressing problem.

That’s at the extreme end of the scale, but there appears to be a widespread revulsion at the very idea that Spurs and England’s all-time record goalscorer, and second highest goalscorer ever in the Premier League, might cost more than Antony.

So what if he’s free in a year? You need him now and he’ll have other options then

It must be noted, of course, that this is far from a United-only problem. The same Spurs fans who insist Kane only be sold at £100m and not a penny less will in the next breath insist Brentford should give them David Raya – a similarly ideal solution to their summer’s most pressing need – for a stack of pennies. Being a football fan isn’t really about coherent internal logic, and we’re only aiming this specifically at United fans right now because they appear to currently be the most conspicuous studiers of the mouths of gift horses.

It almost makes us want the Qatar takeover to happen just to see what goes down when Mbappe signs.