Pierre-Michel Lasogga has told Sky Sports that he dreams of playing in the Premier League, an ambition that might cause a little bit of amusement among the Elland Road faithful.
He told Sky Sports that he thinks the style of football in England suits him better than that of his native Germany, so he’s not intending to return to Hamburg when his loan spell at Leeds finishes at the end of the season. He said "Sure, I’m still an HSV player, but maybe my childhood dream will come true. I feel good here, everything is alright. Here you are given more freedom to use your body. There is less whistling from the referees than in Germany.”
And he was very complimentary about the atmosphere at Elland Road and at the other venues in our division when Leeds are the visitors. "Yeah, I was very surprised when I came here because in the second league in Germany you get five or ten thousand in the stadium and it’s not so big like the first league, the Bundesliga, where you play in front of 50 or 60 thousand, so it’s nice in the stadiums. In England you have smaller stadiums, also in the Premier League, you have 30 or 40 thousand and it’s nice to play here because the fans are so close to the pitch. You feel every moment. It’s a special time for me."
Which brings us to the question of whether the 26-year-old thinks it’s likely that he will get to the Premier League with Leeds via promotion in the next couple of seasons, or whether his comments were intended to catch the attention of a club who will already be in the top division in 2018/19. Lasogga said that nothing has yet been decided about his next move. "The decision is not now in my head, so after the season I will sit with my family and speak about the situation.”
Hamburg want to move him on, as they are currently battling against relegation and want to get him off the wage bill, yet his current deal of £50k a week is clearly going to be a stumbling block with any possible move to Elland Road. Andrea Radrizzani has already said the wage bill is too big and that he will be looking to trim the squad next season, so that amount would be a lot more than we would be willing to pay and the big German will need to take a pay cut to join the mighty whites on a permanent basis. But is has been reported that the two clubs have agreed a transfer fee of £2.25m.
Many Leeds fans remain to be convinced that he’s worth that amount of money, let alone that he’s good enough for the Premier League. He has looked impressive at times this season, for instance with his two goals in the fightback against Millwall, but a lot of the time he seems slow, and surprisingly feeble in the air for such a big man. We’d like to see him ‘use his body’ to get around the pitch a bit more, and he’s currently in a spell of five games without a goal.
Is there any chance that a Premier League club will come in for him? The ‘Football Insider’ website are trying to suggest that he’d be a good signing for Wolves, which I thought was a bit of a laugh. Their theory is that he will be effective in a team where he can stand still and have the ball delivered to the exact spot where he wants it, which the Wolves midfielders are more capable of doing than our current bunch. That might just be plausible, but I’m sure that with the financial backing the Molineux mob currently enjoy they will be setting their sights a little higher than Lasogga as they prepare for life in the Prem next season.
At least that article gave me one idea. We could make a move for any of the current Wolves strikers who are displaced by even more expensive signings arriving in the West Midlands during the summer. That is the standard of player we need to be looking at if we’re finally going to get out of the Championship, rather than hoping to get promoted with the likes of Pierre-Michel Lasogga.