Leicester City are eyeing a bargain move for a striker who is fresh off the back of a 22-goal season ahead of their return to the Premier League.
There has been a lot of negativity surrounding Leicester City to start the summer despite winning the Championship.
That mainly owes to promotion-winning manager Enzo Maresca leaving to take the Chelsea job and PSR concerns leading to Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall following the Argentine coach to West London.
Leicester did get £30 million for Dewsbury-Hall’s services, but this has done little to appease fans who have now lost not only the club’s best player but a boyhood Foxes fan.
With the 30th June PSR deadline having now passed, Leicester can at least start to focus on bringing players in and Steve Cooper is looking to do just that with a bargain move for a new centre-forward.
Leicester City ‘interested’ in £500k Martin Braithwaite
Cooper currently has Jamie Vardy, Patson Daka and Tom Cannon as senior strikers at the club.
Having seen Kelechi Iheanacho leave upon the expiration of his contract, the new Leicester boss will be eyeing more firepower at the top of the pitch.
That desire has led Cooper and Leicester to Espanyol striker Martin Braithwaite.
That is according to Spanish news outlet AS, who report that Leicester are ‘interested’ in the ‘highly-coveted’ striker, with the fact he has a release clause of just £500k making the Dane a really attractive proposition.
Braithwaite would be Leicester risk despite 25 G/A season
As well as the bargain fee attracting attention, Braithwaite is fresh off the back of his best goalscoring season, having scored 22 and assisted three as he fired Espanyol to promotion to La Liga.
However, this is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to the 33-year-old’s scoring exploits across his career and may owe to the drop in level.
Prior to the 2023/24 season, Braithwaite’s best goalscoring tally was 11 league goals in the French top flight in the 2016/17 season.
Whilst very cheap, pinning any survival hopes on Braithwaite is very risky.
Fans may remember the Denmark international’s only previous spell in England with Middlesbrough, in which he scored eight Championship goals before being moved on two years later between 2016 and 2018.
With that in mind, Leicester may be best served exploring other striker options, but it is certainly one to keep an eye on.
