Leicester City have been credited with interest in a Serie A ace but may be wise to avoid a move and instead explore alternatives ahead of their return to the Premier League.
Manager Steve Cooper is playing catch up having been appointed as the new manager of Leicester City towards the end of June.
Despite winning the Championship, Leicester’s preparations for the Premier League were rocked by manager Enzo Maresca leaving to take the Chelsea job before paying £30 million to take Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall with him.
Since those two departures it has been a slightly more stable environment, with arrivals becoming the focus following the 30th June PSR deadline passing; the reason Dewsbury-Hall had to be sold.
Michael Golding, Caleb Okowi, Bobby De Cordova-Reid and last season’s loanee Abdul Fatawu have all signed permanent deals and Leicester are now targeting players in four positions.
Leicester City ‘crazy’ about AC Milan winger Alexis Saelemaekers
One of those positions identified as needing to be addressed is a wide attacker.
Fatawu’s permanent arrival was all but a formality after a deal was effectively agreed with Sporting Lisbon last summer to pay £14.3 million to sign him permanently after a year on loan.
Whilst Fatawu is a winger himself, the Foxes are keen to add another wide player to their ranks and that search has seen them explore a move for AC Milan’s Alexis Saelemaekers who spent last season on loan at Bologna.
That is according to Calcio Mercato, who report that ‘the Premier League is crazy about Alexis Saelemaekers’.
The report goes on to name Leicester as one of the interested parties, as well as rivals Nottingham Forest, saying: ‘On him there are in fact two newly promoted, Leicester City and Ipswich Town, but also Nottingham Forest, and more offers from the same league are on the way’.
It is believed Milan are willing to sale for a fee in the region of €10-15 million (£8.4-12.6m).
The reason Leicester City should avoid move for Saelemaekers
The unfortunate reality is that Leicester are likely to be embroiled in a relegation battle next season following their return to the top flight.
With that in mind, they have to ensure they sign players who can immediately elevate the level of the side and the attacking players may have to be very efficient in order to compete with a higher calibre of opposition.
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Saelemaekers is fresh off the back of a season in which he helped Bologna secure Champions League football alongside Leicester loanee Victor Kristiansen.
Whilst 25-year-old Saelemaekers was decent over the course of the campaign, he did only manage four goals and three assists in 32 games in all competitions.
However, it is his underlying statistics that should show Cooper Saelemaekers is not the solution as the winger signing the club desires.
According to FBREF, when comparing Saelemakers to other attacking midfielders and wingers in Europe’s top five leagues over the past season, the Belgian ranks poorly in a number of attacking metrics.
For non penalty expected goals, Saelemaekers is only in the 12th percentile with 0.12 per 90 minutes and ranks the same for non penalty expected goals plus expected assists with just 0.26 per game.
The winger also ranks in just the 8th percentile for shots per 90 minutes with 1.38 and manages just 0.19 goals per game too.
He also struggles in terms of touches in the opposition penalty area, with just 2.24 per game putting him in the bottom 8% amongst his peers.
With these statistics in mind, Cooper should explore alternative targets who are going to be far more effective in the final third if he wants to keep Leicester in the Premier League.