Defender set for Premier League
Mainz head coach Bo Svensson has revealed that the club expected offers for club captain Moussa Niakhaté this summer and have had made preparations to replace him, should the 26-year-old talent leave. Niakhaté has been heavily linked with a move to newly-promoted Premier League side Nottingham Forest and is widely expected to make a move to the English club in the coming weeks. He currently has a market value of €18 million and could potentially move for even more.
However, rather than lament English clubs with deeper pockets scooping up his players in the transfer window, Svensson was more realistic about the matter and pointed out that his club had already anticipated offers for the defender some time ago. “That’s the downside to performing well,” said Svensson at a press conference on Wednesday. “We know that we have clubs that have more money than us at Mainz. That’s just where we are in the food chain. What we can do about it is prepare ourselves as well as possible, keep an eye out on players that could be interesting to replace Moussa [Niakhaté] or replace other players. Just to strengthen our own team and be as well prepared as we possibly can. Those are the things that we can do.”
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Mainz have already had to endure enticing offers from Premier League clubs last summer, with 24-year-old striker Jean-Philippe Mateta leaving the club for Crystal Palace for a reported €11m, while a further €6.8m has been earned from the sale of Florian Müller and Pierre Kunde too. To date, the club have yet to sign a central defender to replace Niakhaté, having only signed defensive midfielder Anton Stach from Greuther Fürth and Silvan Widmer from FC Basel. But Svensson seemed upbeat about the opportunity to identify another star in the making.
“It’s too bad that we can’t just go on with the same players, year after year, but we’re not the only teams who have this challenge,” said the Mainz head coach. “It’s also the normal way of things and we have to be able to adjust and think ahead. We’ve been well prepared for something to happen this summer and in the football world things are unpredictable. So sometimes you just have to accept that there are some things that you can plan for and other things you have to be flexible and accept you are where you are and we still have a lot to offer as Mainz to bring in players, who can replace the good players that we could possibly lose.”
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