The Chinese Super League is due to restart soon and Shanghai, who are ready to offer Odion Ighalo a new contract worth £400,000 a week, expect him back.
Manchester United want to extend Ighalo’s loan deal, with the Premier League side currently set to lose the striker before the season resumes.
Ighalo’s loan stay at Old Trafford expires at the end of May, when he is scheduled to return to Chinese Super League club Shanghai Shenhua.
United want to know when the season will resume before committing to a new deal for Ighalo who has been costing them £130,000 a week during two months of inactivity.
The top-flight will not have returned by then and the current ‘tentative’ plans of what is known as ‘Project Restart’ are paving the way for action to resume in June, with hopes the 2019/20 campaign could be completed in early August.
United want the striker to remain at the club until the season is finished, having impressed during his spell at the Theatre of Dreams.
The former Watford man made his surprise dream move to Old Trafford in January, and the 30-year-old has scored four goals in three starts for the club.
But adding to his total of eight appearances for the team he supported as a boy has been complicated by the coronavirus crisis.
An extension would depend on the situation with Shanghai Shenhua, as the Chinese Super League edges towards the start of the season in the country where COVID-19 seemed to originated at the end of 2019.
Another factor is the return to fitness of Marcus Rashford and, to a lesser extent, Paul Pogba in that time. It was Rashford’s lay-off due to a back fracture that led to United signing Ighalo in the first place.
Meanwhile, it’s understood that United have no intention of recalling goalkeeper Dean Henderson from his loan at Sheffield United, even though he could end up helping the Yorkshire club beat Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side to a Champions League place.
Henderson is due to return at the start of July, but Manchester United are happy to let the England Under 21 keeper finish the season at Bramall Lane instead of recalling him as extra cover for David de Gea.
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