When Saša Lukic signed for Fulham, I was over the moon. An experienced, versatile and hard-working midfielder – with the added benefit that he was Serbian, something which of course plays no factor in my opinion on him as a footballer.

So what, in my opinion, makes Lukic so good? For starters, one need only look at his record in Serie A to understand why Marco wanted him at Fulham. In his last full season at Torino (which is where all statistics relevant to him will be sourced from) he managed to score five times, while that may not sound like much, Palhinha only scored three times this season in the Premier League, which of course is no slight on Palhinha. We could also look at Lukic’s passing statistics to understand what kind of player he is. An average of 1.21 key passes a game puts him ahead of Harrison Reed. Now it could be argued that these statistics are incomparable, that while Lukic can put in frequent key passes, that must mean the number of successful passes he makes will be lower. Right? Well, dear reader, you would be mistaken. Not only does Lukic have a higher pass completion rate (standing at 87.82%) than Harrison Reed, he has the highest successful pass completion rate out of our first-team midfielders. In fact in nearly every metric, be it dribbling, defensive actions and anything in between Lukic outperforms his competitor (Reed) and, on paper, looks like the perfect player to upgrade our midfielder.

Now that it has been, indisputably, proven that Lukic has an extremely high ceiling, bucketfuls of talent and should have a lot to contribute to any European push. Why was this not immediately clear based on his first few months at Fulham? There are a lot of challenges that came with his move to London. The Premier League is extremely different to Serie A which focuses on technical skill and ability. Not only that, he has had to move to a completely new country whose language he did not speak a word of when he got here, which would be a challenge for anyone, even our university-educated Serbian midfielder. In the middle of a successful season where much of the team is shining, it can be hard to immediately stand out.

However, there are signs that Lukic is progressing. In the now the Premier League Summer Series, he stood out for me as a glimmers of hope as Marco Silva was forced to press academy players into service far too often. His passing was on point and his ability to breakup attacks was second to none. It is my firm belief that over this coming season he will have a big role to play and an even bigger chance to prove himself to the club and its fans. And I am sure he will not disappoint.