Preston North End have spent the entire majority of this summer’s transfer window trying – but failing – to bring in some new players to help revamp our squad and to kick on in our bid for a play-off place this season.
A position of extreme importance in terms of strengthening has been in our forward line. Last season, our four main strikers (Seani Maguire, Jayden Stockley, Louis Moult and David Nugent) only bagged a combined total of 11 goals between them.
To put that into context, Daniel Johnson scored 12. Yes, an attacking midfielder outscored our entire frontline.
In that respect, it’s important (and Alex Neil has emphasised this himself) that we look for a fresh signing to help us bag the additional goals we need.
However, after chasing countless strikers this summer (see: Keinan Davis, Macauley Bonne, Reo Griffiths, Cauley Woodrow and Ferdy Druijf) we have still yet to land not just a new attacker but ANY signing.
Now, according to the Lancashire Evening Post, we’ve actually turned our sights abroad to the MLS! This could of course prove to be fruitless and could also be an attempt from the club to almost SEEM as if we are looking to do business in any market we can.
But, we have to take the positives from it and that is that we’re actually looking overseas in a bid to bring in the players we want. Usually, our preferred approach is to consult the English or Irish leagues (perhaps, at a push, the Scottish too). However, after being linked with Druijf earlier in the offseason, it seems as though the club are beginning to look elsewhere for their recruitment.
Signing an MLS player could prove to be a huge gamble – the league’s quality isn’t the greatest by any means – or it could prove to be a masterstroke by bringing in a player who is unknown to the English leagues and therefore if he is an unknown quantity, he could be a handful for opposition defences. Any player coming from the MLS to England would also undoubtedly have a point to prove in terms of how good they are and would want to prove it.
So, in this article, rather than pick apart why we probably won’t bring in a player from the US of A, we’ve decided to take a look at some potential promising strike targets that we should (but probably won’t) look at this summer from across the pond.
We’ve tried to look for players who could easily fit into our side and are of the right age. However, one thing to consider is the need for a work permit to come and play over in England. Most of the players on this list would have to secure one of these permits in order to seal a deal and that could be a struggle in some cases. For the purpose of this article though, we are including players who would need one but would (hopefully) get one if they did move to the UK.
Jordan Morris – Seattle Sounders
Morris is the man who has gained the most traction rumour wise on Twitter. The 25-year old has never played outside of America, coming up through the youth ranks with Seattle Sounders before eventually playing for their first team.
He’s also played for his countries national team and has proven he can bang in the goals on the international stage with them too, which is a promising sign.
He primarily plays as a left winger but is versatile and can also feature both centrally and on the right wing – something which could be invaluable to Alex Neil, considering that he likes to rotate the players he uses in his forward line (he often plays Maguire on the wing or upfront and the same applies to Barkhuizen and Sinclair).
This season alone he has nine goal contributions in ten games for his club, which is an impressive return for the attacker.
At just 25, he is entering the prime of his career but also has a ton of experience that he can use to his advantage if he was to make the leap over to England. He’s already featured in over 100 professional games in his career (he’s played 116 times for the Sounders) and has scored 38 goals along the way with 18 assists.
It’s clear that he knows where the back of the net is and we could be the team to give him his chance to break onto the scene in the UK.
However, the only stumbling block could be the asking price. Seattle Sounders are top of their Conference in the MLS and as Morris is one of their most important players, it’s doubtful they’ll let him go for cheap, especially with the season well underway.
Transfermarkt have the fee for Morris as £3.15m and if that is truly the case – and knowing North End’s history – even that fee could be too much for us to fork out.
Chris Mueller – Orlando City SC
Mueller is next on my list and there are a lot of things to like about the Orlando man. He’s still only young at 24 and he’s worked his way up through the ranks with his current club, having been drafted from Badger and becoming a solid player for his team.
He does play mainly as a winger but that certainly isn’t a bad thing. There’s definitely room in our squad for another wide player and although he isn’t mainly a central player, preferring to play on the right, he has featured as both a central striker and on the left side of the field.
He doesn’t have a bad goalscoring record by any means considering he spends most of his time out on the wing. In his career, he’s featured 41 times as a RW, with 16 goal contributions.
If you look at Mueller’s record as a central striker, he has four appearances and one goal. Neil could certainly utilise him anywhere on that forward line, which is again good to have in the side, or even turn him into just a central striker.
However, he isn’t the type of forward we’ve been linked with and that we need for our style of play. We all know Neil likes a target man and Mueller isn’t really that, preferring to have the ball at his feet and run at the opposition (he is a winger after all).
In that respect, Mueller might not be the man that we need but he could certainly be a tidy signing for our attack.
Mauro Manotas – Houston
The 25-year old ticks a lot of boxes in terms of a potential striking signing for North End. Of course, his primary position is as a central striker which immediately is a big tick for the player.
He isn’t too old of a signing and still has room to grow as a forward and is about to enter his prime years. He does have a decent striking record as a forward, with 67 goal contributions in 103 games which is superb for a striker but so far this season he has failed to hit the same heights.
He has only featured in nine games so far, bagging two goals. Compared to previous seasons, it’s a bit of a slow start for Manotas but his overall goalscoring record is promising if he could carry that over to England.
In fact, he’s also been in America since the 2014/15 season and could now be on the lookout for a change of scenery.
Once again though, a stumbling point could be the potential asking price. Transfermarkt has his value as £3.6m and that’s probably about £2m over our budget in all honesty.
Adam Buksa – New England Revolution
Buksa most definitely fits the character profile for an Alex Neil striker signing. Standing at about 6 feet and 3-inches tall, he most definitely has the height and aerial advantage to slot into our team and become a threat in that respect.
In fact, he averages 3 out of 5 aerial duels won per game so far this season, which isn’t a bad return at all. He’s also in our age range of what would be considered ‘a good target’ due to the fact he is 24, with plenty of scope for even more improvement as a player.
Just because he is extremely tall doesn’t mean that he isn’t mobile though. If you look at the types of goal he has scored, a lot of his contributions aren’t actually headers but involve him taking the ball at his feet, beating his man and firing one in.
His goal contributions are good, with 40 goals in 85 games as a centre forward so far in his career. At Revolution this has dipped to three goals in 15 games but this could be down to the service he is receiving.
However, as has been the case with most of the players on this list, the stumbling block remains the potential fee. We really can’t be sure what North End would be willing to pay for any player this summer considering we haven’t spent over £2m in 20 years.
Buksa has only just moved to America from Poland (he joined Revolution from Pogon Szczecin back in January for a fee of around £3.5m) and would he be willing to completely relocate again so soon?
Revolution would also want to recoup most of the fee they paid for him, so it would rule us out of a signing based on his value.
However, if we want a target man, Buksa could be that man if we are willing to dip our hands into our pockets.
Kacper Przybylko – Philadelphia
Now, we have arguably the best bargain buy on this list. He ticks so many boxes as a potential striker and comes extremely cheaply too and well in our price range.
Przybylko is slightly older than the others on this list at 27 but is still arguably in the prime of his career and it’s only a minor detail compared to when you look at the striker as a player.
For starters, he has a good goalscoring record – something that we definitely need to look for in a potential signing. With 50 goal contributions in 133 games as a striker, it certainly isn’t a bad record by any stretch. In fact, that’s an average of one goal every 2.66 games.
In addition, you guessed it, he’s tall, strong and a good target man. Standing at nearly 6 foot 3, he is tremendous in the air (he’s averaged 2.6 aerials won per game so far this season) but is also very mobile and scores a lot of his goals and makes a lot of his plays with the ball at his feet.
His hold-up play is good (as shown by him averaging more accurate long and short passes to teammates than inaccurate ones this campaign).
The final good thing about Przybylko is that he’s actually within our modest budget according to Transfermarkt. The website values him at just £720,000. It remains a fairly steep amount for us but isn’t ‘breaking the bank’ and is the kind of fee we have spent on players before.
It means that maybe Przybylko could be a good option for us if we are in fact looking throughout the MLS for a potential strike target.
Hopefully you enjoyed our look at some potential strike targets. There are a number who we could have included but didn’t and of course, these are all dependent on us actually looking in America for a new striker while also hoping that some of these would not require a work permit (and, if they did, that they would get one in time).
Agree with our potential targets or do you disagree? Would you like us to sign someone off this list or have we missed someone out that we should definitely be looking at? Let us know what you think via @VitalPNE on our Twitter.