Manchester United are closing in on tying academy winger Noah Ajayi down to a new long-term contract, Sky Sports reports, in a rare piece of good news at Carrington this week.
The 17-year-old has been developing through United's age groups since arriving from Germany aged just 10, and is now preparing to sign his first professional deal at the club. Born in Hamburg, Ajayi has continued to represent Germany at youth level throughout his time in Manchester, having recently featured for the country's under-19s.
Standing at 6ft 2in, Ajayi is comfortable on either flank but is understood to favour cutting in from the left, and has caught the eye of academy staff, including academy director Stephen Torpey, as he has progressed through United's youth ranks.
Interest from elsewhere in England and across Europe had been growing around the winger, but United's academy setup appears to have done enough to convince the teenager that his long-term future lies at Old Trafford rather than elsewhere.
The timing of the development will be welcomed by the club after a difficult few days on the youth front. It emerged this week that fellow highly rated prospect JJ Gabriel, 15, has told United of his intention to leave, a development that has cast some uncertainty over the club's academy pipeline just as senior results have also come under scrutiny following a run of poor form.
Ajayi's expected new deal offers a more encouraging story from Carrington, underlining United's continued efforts to retain their best emerging talent even as questions persist elsewhere about the direction of the first team and the club's ability to hold on to promising young players.
Torpey, who arrived at United from Brentford last year having previously worked across the academy set-ups at Manchester City and Liverpool, has made retaining home-grown prospects a priority since taking charge of the club's youth development, with Ajayi among the clearest early beneficiaries of that approach so far.
No timeframe has been put on when the contract will be formally signed, but the expectation at Carrington is that it will be finalised in the coming weeks.