Fulham are ready to battle Bournemouth in a bid to sign the Genk centre back Jhon Lucumi, according to reports from the Colombian international’s homeland.
Marco Silva is desperate to add defensive recruits in the final weeks of Fulham’s pre-season given that he has only has two senior centre backs currently available during the Whites’ pre-season tour of Portugal. An audacious move for Alessio Romagnoli failed earlier this month and, while Fulham remain interested in Tottenham’s Joe Rodon, they are interested in signing 24 year-old Lucumi, who has less than a year to run on his current contract in Belgium.
Genk are ready to contemplate a summer sale rather than losing the ball-playing centre half on a free transfer but Fulham will need to see off former manager Scott Parker, whose Bournemouth side are also looking for defensive reinforcements ahead of their return to the top flight. Lucumi joined Ghenk in 2018 having made more than a hundred appearances for his hometown club Deportivo Cali and won the Belgian title in his first season with the Smurfs.
Lucumi, who has also lifted the Belgian Cup with Genk, has made 134 appearances in four seasons with Genk and has reportedly featured on Atalanta’s radar, although the Serie A side have yet to make a firm offer for his services. The 6ft 1in defender, who has won five senior caps for his country, has amassed Champions’ League and Europa League experience during his time on the continent and is believed to be intrigued by the prospect of playing Premier League football.
Don’t know much about this guy but one would assume that, judging by his playing record, he is half decent having played at a high level.
I’m just grateful that, finally, once again, we are hearing about a centre back in all the paper talk that is bandied around every day.
I keep hoping that the earlier report of our interest in Spurs’ Rondon might hold some truth and that, just maybe, unknown to us, negotiations are hinging upon Spurs return from Korea.
Brentford have just agreed a 2 year deal with Burnley’s Ben Mee. He would have done a good job for us in the short term being a former captain and vastly experienced but, of course, he is 32 years old and T Khan would not countenance bringing in a player of that age -even on a free. Brentford’s gain -our loss!
It looks as though the Wolfsburg right back is a done deal. Yaaayyy!!! He is, reportedly, on his way to Portugal to finalise things.
A year or so ago, Steve Cooper was interviewed and rejected as Scott Parker’s replacement as Fulham manager. I’m sure he was disappointed. Even more so as he watched Fulham soar away at the top of the table, often demolishing some teams.
He slogged away at Forest and got them promoted via the playoffs. No mean feat considering their position when he took over.
Right now, with TEN new players acquired during this window, he is, almost certainly, having a good laugh and is reflecting what a funny old game football is-as Jimmy Greaves liked to quote.
On the other hand, Marco Silva-who delivered us from the negative drivel of the Scott Parker era -and had us playing with style and swagger, leading us to Championship glory, seemingly had the world at his feet. He was promised so much and relayed that promise to us fans. Right now, he must, no matter how loyal he professes to be, or how much of a professional face he maintains, be bitterly disappointed in the lack of support, the broken promises etc. He would have given his A list of potential buys to the Khans way back before the season had even ended and he has had to endure months of negativity-seeing his wish list devolve into something more like a C or even a D list of proposed signings.
The recent article by the US wrestling journalist emphasising how T Khan spreads himself so thinly across 3 major projects is spot on. I don’t know enough about wrestling to know how well the wrestling is doing but it’s pretty clear that, re the Jaguars, it’s not good and, more importantly, as far as we Fulham fans are concerned, T Khan controlling our transfer business has, and continues to be, an unmitigated disaster.
Yup I suppose to the above but a little clarity regarding the motives of the billionaire owners might explain the situation.
Other clubs have billionaire owners too and they spend lavishly on squads that can only be dreamed of. Simple fact is that Fulham will never participate in the Champions League…the one amazing run in the Europa an anomaly.
Players like Fabio have no future at Fulham because their talent exceeds aiming for premier league survival.
So those who arrive know what to expect and come knowing they can’t hack it at even mid table clubs…
The owners know what they have and the limitations mean Silva’s list of players will go anywhere else if there’s another offer.
It’s left to the fans to hope for a super season to hit the heights and finish 17th, whilst watching Fabio and Harvey shoot for the stars.
The Khans aren’t Fulham fans, it’s just a bit of fun.
Macedo, Cohen, Langley, Mullery, Haynes etc can never happen again in big business sport.
Charles whilst I agree with you on TK, just signing a load of players is no sign of anything positive. Norwich signed a cohort of rubbish last season. I’d rather us be patient and get the right players. As for Ben Mee, what makes you think that a CB who has played brexit ball under Sean Dyche would work well in a Silva system? Not quite sure I get the logic behind that… Good fit for Brentford though as they play atrocious football.
I kind of agree with Charles. There are obviously problems behind the scenes as to have only signed 2 players at this point with 3 months notice of promotion means we’re either not organised enough or aggressive enough in our pursuit. Preseason is well underway so things have not gone to plan. We’ve been linked with the right players Leno, Diop, Bailly….so they’re making the right choices just not getting stuff done. There must be money to be bidding on these players. We just can’t have done enough prework to know eg why spend all summer pursuing Leno and then at the last minute realise you don’t want to pay the fee. It should have been brought to a head a month ago. If we thought Arsenal wanted too much then move on. We’ve now faffed about for so long we’re desperate. We just have to hope that when the top clubs complete their Preseason they let a few squad players go and then we pick them up. So yep probably a bit if patience is going to be needed now…but….I think if we’d done the work earlier we wouldn’t have been in this position. Get ready for an influx of loan players again is my guess at this stage.
I disagree with Charlesto a certain extent when he refers to Cooper and a “What could have been” scenario.
The issue isnt with Silva and the management, its with Tony Khan and is team of data analysts and it always has been. We went up under slav needing a brand new back 4. Targett and Kalas was a loan, Fredericks left on a free and Ream and Odoi wasnt good enough. It should have been a priority yet he went after Anguissa, Seri, Vietto and other players instead of buying players that we desperately needed early on. 2 years later the same issue, we needed to replace Ream at the very worst, and didnt do it until after 4 games into the season when the writing was on the wall. At the present day, we are STILL looking to replace Ream.
Envious eyes are glanced at Forest because they have gone up with a plan and acted decisively whereas we just mess around. Another year of pain looks to be on the way and nothing will change whilst Tony Khan is involved.
I’m certainly not advocating that we sign a load of players.
Having said that, The Athletic reported that Marco Silva was expecting 10 new players by the start of pre-season and was very unhappy that that was not the case. Clearly, he had been given some kind of assurances. This is further confirmed by his statement once promotion was confirmed -that the lessons of the past had been learnt-later supported by T Khan.
I do believe that we we needed 5 or 6 QUALITY signings-not signings for the sake of it and it definitely seemed as if this would be the case.
The press told us about a race between Wolves and ourselves for Palhinha-which the player, himself, has denied this week. The Manor Solomon deal dragged on and on but it was another indication that decent players were being sought. The mentions of Leno and Diop further augmented this. Things looked really good and, then, we came to a full stop.
A month has gone by and we learn that the issues re Leno and Diop are related to finance with the selling clubs wanting too much money.
We certainly do not want to be held to ransom but to go from Leno to Rico – a player we have seen is just not good enough -is a real kick in the teeth.
As for being patient -that doesn’t really hold sway at this late stage. We were patient two pre-seasons ago -when T Khan told us that he had learnt his lesson after his disastrous spending spree when we were promoted under Jokanovic and had signed too many players and did not believe that we needed to strengthen our squad. After getting just ONE point from our first EIGHTEEN, everything suddenly changed and an influx of loanees descended on Motspur Park-all of whom had to be integrated as quickly as possible. We then picked up FIFTEEN points from the next SIXTY-and this was arguably our finest period of performances that season. Our defence was excellent, our creativity was good. Unfortunately, our manager wished to discard our one decent striker in favour of Ivan Cavaleiro so we couldn’t’ score to save our lives.
We all knew that, coming up to the January window, all we needed was a decent striker and our points would improve dramatically and T Khan duly provided us with Josh Maja!!!
We were told that FFP was the reason for this inability to provide us with just one decent striker.
Now, once again, we are being told by S Khan that FFP is, once again, hindering our ability to buy quality players.
It may well be true but, please, can somebody explain to me how Nottingham Forest CAN buy without infringing on FFP rules and we can’t.?
We desperately need a centre back.
We need a quality back up to Mitro.
If these two positions alone are resolved, IMO, we will be okay.
I would love a better right and left back but I am not suggesting they take priority over a quality centre back.
I am happy to start with Rodak.
I believe our midfield is adequate and our creativity is adequate with Solomon and Pereira supplementing Wilson.
As for Ben Mee, he may have played in an ugly system under Dyche but he was instrumental in helping Burnley retain their Premiership status for so many seasons, and, but for injury, may have prevented them being relegated last season. He is tough and battle hardened and a proven Premiership performer. I was actually only using him as an example of the type of player that could do a job for us-in the short term.
Anyway, here’s hoping that we see an improved performance on Sunday after another week of hard work and team gelling.
We all want the same thing; a team that can compete on a permanent basis in the Premiership. We don’t expect trophies -just a team good enough to give us exciting football and, occasionally, get our hopes up and fill us with pride.
That’s not too much to ask for is it?
As long as the Khan’s run our club we will always be a championship team they have no ambitions to be anything else and they don’t like spending money on top players, some of the players we are being linked to are not an up grade on the ones we already have and they aren’t good enough for the premiership.so how can the Khan’s justify our ticket prices being higher than Man U, and Man City for the Liverpool game, they are taking the piss and ripping off our fans.
There are 2 separate issues here:
1) the size of the budget to spend
2) how effectively it is spent
I to some degree don’t care as much about 1. There is money but we are a small club. The Khan’s have put money in and still do. It may not be huge but there is money there. Look at what we’ve done over pasts easons
I’m more concerned with HOW we go about what we do with whatever budget we have. We seem ineffective, slow and get caught wasting time on deals that don’t happen. That’s what is wrong. With 3 months notice of promotion and to be in this stage means our management of transfers is poor somewhere. The budget is what it is.
Another day and no signings. If money is the problem sell to someone who has it and knows how to properly spend it.
As we desperately need a central defender more than any other position this could prove to be a sensible , if not ideal signing. However I bet my bottom dollar it does not happen. If we do not sign a quality keeper I would be happy to stick with Rodak but we need to get rid of Gazzanga use one of the youngsters as back up.
A t least one central defender must be the priority. The best goalkeeper in the world will struggle with the defence we have at the moment. Lucumi signing must be a positive but our record shows it is unlikely to happen he will go elsewhere Bournemouth maybe> I am beginning to despair. We do not need any more midfield players but want defensive reinforcements