Sports journalist Ben Jacobs was a guest on the Just Joe Football Show last night and he revealed that Leeds have shown late interest in Lecce and Denmark international midfielder, Morten Hjulmand.
The 23-year-old was the source of speculation in recent weeks, with interest coming from both Nottingham Forest and Leicester. More recently, Southampton have stepped up their interest and the Saints manager, Nathan Jones is keen to get the deal done as swiftly as possible. According to Ben Jacobs, Leeds have now shown themselves to be interested in the combative midfielder and are keen to replace the recently departed Mateusz Klich.
The midfielder, signed by Lecce in January 2021 when they were in the second tier of Italian football, has been attracting attention for his fine displays for the Serie A side this season, but Lecce are reportedly not keen on selling the player and will only consider a deal if a bid ‘above market value’ came in for Hjulmand. Southampton were told they would have to bid upward of £16m for their asset, meaning any bid from Leeds would need to be nearer the £20m mark.
Jesse Marsch is looking for quality in his midfield, but whilst the situation with Azzedine Ounahi is still unclear, a deal for Morten Hjulmand is unlikely until that is resolved one way or another.
Ben Jacobs said, “So the challenge here is fee, plain and simple that Lecce are valuing him at somewhere close to 20 million and Leeds are quite late in terms of expressing an interest so they can’t be seen as a front runner here by any stretch of the imagination, but what we’re seeing is Leeds spinning plates late in the window and I think that fans will be relatively pleased by that because as you say they brought in two already the fact that they’re still active in the market shows you that there’s a real commitment to other relatively healthy January we should preface before we go into any of these names that January is a seller’s market, not a buyers market.”
“Today we’ve seen a flurry of movement as well with one or two players that Leeds have looked at in the past, Danny Ings, for example, is a good example of that and he’s going to be off to West Ham United. So, all of this movement is maybe creating a false perception that it’s a mad window. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if the last two weeks were a little bit underwhelming but with Hjulmand, the issue is the interest came originally from Nottingham Forest and from Leicester and then a little bit later down the line but very credibly from Southampton, and Southampton are the club that have made the most advanced approach so far.”
He added, “With Hjulmand, he’s only 23 years of age. So you can’t exactly call him experienced but there is a maturity about his game, that’s what attracted both Leeds and Southampton as well but I think it’s going to be a fee of somewhere close to £20 million.”
“In addition to that the payment terms are not particularly preferable either. So Lecce have come out and basically said that they don’t see themselves in this January as the selling club, and therefore it’s not a case of a player’s head being turned by a Premier League club. It actually the reality that unless they get some fee considered to be above market value, there’ll be no movement.
“So I think that Leeds’ interest is going to come from perhaps the fact that they want to fill that sort of Klich-like void. And if you compare the two players, there are some similarities in terms of style. So, Hjulmand is a tough tackling ball winner. He is aggressive, but it’s cautious aggression. He’s a hard-working player, and he offers a lot of qualities that will take quite well to Premier League football, but we can’t call Leeds front runners here because they’ve already spent within this window and evaluation especially considering how long is left on the contract is not as I understand it, something that Leeds, at this stage are particularly keen to meet.”
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