Report: Leeds ready to pay £20m for top target amid big development, club will sell now
Marcelo Bielsa has Freiburg centre-back Robin Koch in his sights after failing in his bid to bring Ben White back to Leeds United.
And The Sun claim that Marcelo Bielsa is ready to pay £20m for the ball-playing centre-back, with Tottenham, Newcastle, Lazio and RB Leipzig all interested.
Freiburg are ready to “cash in” on their player who is entering the final year of his contract.
He could leave for free in the summer and start negotiating with clubs as early as January.
This comes after a big development in the hunt for White, after Brighton turned down Leeds’ third and supposedly final offer for him
Last chance for Freiburg
This is Freiburg’s last chance to get a decent fee for Koch and it seems that they’re going to do it.
How much are they going to get for him?
O Jogo said that his price would have dropped to £10.8m because of his contract situation and the depressed Coronavirus market.
That was echoed by David Anderson from The Mirror, who said that Freiburg “want around £10m” for the centre-back.
That would be an absolute steal for Leeds, as echoed by sister stats site All Stats Aren’t We.
However, this is the first that we’ve heard of clubs like Tottenham and Newcastle being interested as well, and Leeds really won’t want to lose another major centre-back target.
RB Leipzig are also said to be in the hunt and they’ve got previous.
Freiburg turned down an offer for Koch from RB Leipzig in February, said to be between €15m-€20m (£13.5m-£18m) depending on bonuses.
Phil Hay said that Freiburg wanted around £20m for him in January and if all these clubs are interested then they might well get close to that again.
In other Leeds United news, ‘What a proposition’ – BBC 5 Live journalist says striker Bielsa wants ‘happy’ to sign for Leeds