You never know with transfers. In 1999, Arsene Wenger signed a skinny kid with a scant 23 goals to his name in 121 career appearances to date. That kid? Thierry Henry, who went on to become Arsenal’s leading scorer. Mo Salah had 29 in 65 in his two years at Roma when Klopp brought him to Anfield (Sesko has 27 goals in 64 appearances for Leipzig, for comparison). Granted, Salah was £30m and not £70m, and I’m by no means saying Sesko will be those players. There are other transfers that looked certain to work out but didn’t. You just don’t know.
Both our main striker targets have risk. Sesko is 21 and very raw. The other one is 27, has been a scoring machine, and is in his prime, but the majority of Gyokeres’ goals came against clubs not named Benfica, Porto, or Braga. In other words, he’s feasted against minnows of the Portuguese league.
Long story long… The club and scouts have been looking hard at both Sesko and Gyokeres for several years and have identified these two as the prospects. Our hit rate on transfers has been pretty good of late, as has Berta’s track record when he was sporting director at Atlético. In the scouting dept etc we trust.
But this transfer had better hit, whomever they decide to sign.