Florentino Perez blamed Manchester United's lack of experience in transfers for the David De Gea administration issues.

“‘I think what they lack is experience,” Pérez said. “We have missed out on players before, Franck Ribéry and Patrick Vieira for example, but what is surprising is that someone wants to do a deal and only starts the process 12 hours before. It’s the inexperience of the new people in charge. We have worked with them [United] before, with Peter Kenyon and David Gill and with Sir Alex Ferguson.

“We still have a good relationship with Manchester United but this is exactly the same as what happened before with [Fábio] Coentrão and [Ander] Herrera and we thought they would have learned from what happened in the past.”

United narrowly failed to sign Coentrão from Real and Herrera from Athletic Bilbao on deadline day two years ago.