Ipswich intent: SCOUT NOTES, July 22
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SCOUT NOTES stopped for a couple of weeks — apologies about that, other stuff got in the way — but the transfers haven’t. There’s been another flurry of moves that have tickled our fancy, all while pre-seasons and actual league seasons are kicking off all over Europe.
We’ll gradually feed the proper football stuff back into this newsletter over the coming weeks, but this issue focuses mostly on the transfers — and Ipswich’s intent, Inter’s Slovenian signing, Spurs’ home-grown star, and even more interesting stuff from the summer so far. Read onnnnn, read onnnnn.
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Ipswich Town’s Championship raid
After securing back-to-back promotions with Kieran McKenna at the helm and new owners in situ, Ipswich Town are back in the big time.
I was interested to see what their plan would be for the summer transfer window and it became quite obvious pretty quickly: sign the best from the Championship, the league they’ve just came from.
Omari Hutchinson was first, whom they had on loan for the 2023/24 season and had to pay Chelsea some £20 million to get him back permanently; his 10 goals and four assist helped power their promotion, and his attacking skillset off the right wing has the potential to be impactful in the top flight.
Next was Jacob Greaves, a long-time EFL standout. He’s played almost 18,000 minutes across the past five seasons, spanning a loan to Cheltenham Town in League Two as an 18-year-old, a title-winning season in League One at Hull City, then three seasons of 40+ appearances in the Championship. He’s a tall left-footer that cost an initial £15 million with an FBRef report that looks like this — please note: Green Bar Scouting isn’t advised by SCOUTED.
Then there’s two former Manchester City academy graduates: Liam Delap, son of Rory, and Arijanet Muric from the recently-relegated Burnley. The former scored eight goals last season at Hull, where he found more success than in his previous two Championship loans, and the latter has had been a goalkeeper that we don’t know much about.
Delap is particularly interesting because Ipswich are taking a bit of a punt on the profile: he’s big, physical, fast, and a bit of a bulldozer. Give him space and he can do damage, put him in transition and he can eat you up. That deal could cost them up to £20 million.
Is it a good plan? It’s a rock-solid plan. The Championship to Premier League is perhaps the most secure pathway there is, not least because of their relatively similar athletic and physical demands. Just look at the recent hits: Ebere Eze, Jarrod Bowen, Michael Olise, Ollie Watkins, Adam Wharton — and that’s just off the top of my caffeineless head, and it doesn’t even include those that have been down there on loan.
If Ipswich go straight back down, then these purchases will either be sold straight back up for significant fees, or play key roles in a division they’ve already done well in, likely leading another promotion tilt. I like it a lot.
Inter bag Luka Topalović
We like Luka Topalović a lot. We first watched him at last summer’s UEFA U-17 EURO and immediately fell for his playmaking in a plucky Slovenia side.
He has the potential to form a great one-two punch with Benjamin Šeško at senior level, and, after a full season as a starter for Domžale, Inter have signed the 18-year-old for a fee upwards of €850k.
Topalović can do a bit of everything: he’s a solid athlete, a talented passer, clever dribbler, and good ball-striker. He plays perdominantly as an attack-minded midfielder that likes to support play from deeper areas.
We expect he’ll play with their Primavera and UEFA Youth League teams at U-19 age group to begin with, while training and subbing for the first team on a semi-regular basis. That would be a good level for him right now, but he shouldn’t be stuck there for long. He was playing senior football as a 16-year-old and has much of the tools to handle first-team minutes elsewhere. We’d have really liked to see him go to a club where that would be expected of him straight away, somewhere like Belgium or the Netherlands.
He has similarities to another SCOUTED favourite from the Balkans, Vasilije Adžić. Juventus’ Montenegrin is probably a higher level athlete than Inter’s Slovenian but both have similar profiles and skillsets.
They both have the potential to be big players in big leagues in future.
Moore, Moore, Moore!
Veering away from the transfers for a brief moment, we just want to write a little bit about Spurs’ Mikey Moore. We wrote a lot more about the Spurs ‘project’ in general in our last SCOUT NOTES, if you want to read that.
But anyway, the soon-to-be 17-year-old could be the breakout talent of the upcoming season. His UEFA U-17 EURO performances were outstanding and somewhat reminiscent of what Lamine Yamal was doing in the same tournament last summer.
He’s featuring prominently in Spurs’ pre-season preparations and looks the part. What sticks out most about Moore is his power: he is ahead of the athletic curve for his age, equipped with a strength of balance and movement that enables him to carry over big distances, ride challenges, run off the last line, and plenty more. Factor in his wicked ball-striking and you have a proper player, let alone a prospect.
Spurs are reportedly in the market for a new winger, but we’d love to see them give priority to their own academy graduate. Do they need to? Not really, he seems set on signing a professional terms at the club. Should they? That’s a more nuanced question, to which we’d reply ‘why not?’.
Whatever their decision with that, Moore has the quality to push his way into the first team reckoning regardless. We’re excited.
Three Interesting Transfer Things
A hat-trick of intriguing happenings, organised into a trio of quickfire sections.
→ Africa and Scandinavia
Malick Junior Yalcouyé: IFK Göteborg signed him from famous Ivorian club ASEC Mimosas in February, played him 14 times in five months, then sold him to Brighton & Hove Albion for a club-record fee in July.
You can read our appraisal of that move here — spoiler: it’s classic Brighton — but it’s another notch for the Africa-Scandinavia pathway which has been very fruitful for players and clubs for the past half-decade or so.
Sweden’s Allsvenskan, Norway’s Eliteserien and Denmark’s Superligaen have been the perfect landing spot for many young prospects making the leap from Africa to Europe. The level of football allows them to make immediate impacts, and the summer leagues of Sweden and Norway offer a much easier acclimation in terms of climate, as does each country’s proficiency in the English language. Many more will follow Yalcouyé.
→ Mahmudu Bajo on the move
Sticking with the Africans in Europe theme, Mahmudu Bajo is an obscure prospect I like a lot. He was a standout in a fun Gambian side at last summer’s FIFA U-20 World Cup, and he made our Alternative Team of the Tournament.
Prior to it, he agreed to join Slovakian side FK Železiarne Podbrezová. Bajo played almost 2,600 minutes in his first and only season there before moving up the Slovakian ladder to DAC Dunajska Streda, a club that have a bit of pedigree when it comes to selling young players to bigger leagues.
Going purely off his U-20 World Cup and underlying data in Slovakia, don’t be surprised if he follows suit. Keep tabs on him for the season and next summer.
→ The Højlunds have left the building
Back in Janaury 2022, FC København had three Højlund brothers on their books. This summer, two-and-a-half years later, they have none.
Rasmus was the first to leave, joining Sturm Graz where he started his rapid rise to Atalanta then Manchester United. Now the younger twins, Oscar and Emil, have both left for Germany, joining Eintracht Frankfurt and Schalke 04 respectively after being involved a fair bit with the senior squad last season.
FCK are a club with a thriving academy system, but they continue to let their graduates go for relatively small fees early in their careers.
In case you missed it…
This is where we link to all the stuff that you may have missed on SCOUTED Notebook over the past week or so. Tuck in!
The smoldering Italian defender is on his way to North London, so Tom and Stevie have banged their heads together (tough luck Stevie because Tomos’ head is very large) to give the lowdown on the move from all perspectives.
Nico Williams: the definitive profile, by Stephen Ganavas
More tremendous analysis of another EURO 2024 starlet. This is pertinent because it looks like Barça are going to throw away their next five years of financial security to sign him. If they don’t, a Premier League club will.
The future and the past: The Technical Area, by Tom Curren
And finally, a little update on all things SCOUTED. Tom, our Founder and Lead Editor, has penned this monster of a piece to update you all on what’s been going on behind the scenes here, and what we intend to do in the future.
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