Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea & Spurs are all after Benjamin Šeško - this is where he would fit in

Benjamin Šeško could end up being one of the most in-demand strikers of the summer after the 20-year-old Slovenian and Football Manager idol closed his first season at RB Leipzig by scoring in seven consecutive games. Now a forward who was already being intermittently linked with Manchester United is also alleged to be on the radar of Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur.

It's not clear whether he’s likely to push for a move to the Premier League this year. Reports suggest that he’s already rejected a lucrative offer from Saudi Arabia while his club are offering him a new contract that would add an extra year to a deal which already runs through until 2028. In other words, he wouldn’t come cheap, and he may well be happy to continue his progress in Germany.

But if – and it remains a sizeable if – he were to move, which of the four English sides he’s been linked with would seem like a good fit? We’ve assessed how well Šeško would work at each of the four clubs who are rumoured to be in the market for his services.

Manchester United

It’s hard to find an area Manchester United don’t need to find a way to improve after their worst-ever Premier League finish, but up front is one of the more glaring problems – they simply didn’t score enough goals, and while summer signing Rasmus Højlund had a purple patch in January and February, nobody was scoring consistently.

It isn’t really clear that Šeško could fix that. He may have hit seven goals in seven games at the end of the campaign, but he only scored seven all season before that as he slowly worked his way into Leipzig’s first team. For United to gamble on another young and mostly unproven striker at this stage would be somewhat remarkable. He’s also got a broadly similar playing profile to Højlund, both in terms of physical profile and the way he looks to move off the ball. This would feel like a strange signing – a gamble on talent when production is needed immediately, and a player who overlaps directly with the young star they already have.

Arsenal

The Gunners are most certainly in the market for a striker and the link to Šeško emerged after reports began to suggest that their number one target, Sporting’s Viktor Gyökeres, was likely to stay in Portugal for another year. The question is whether Šeško is really the kind of player Mikel Arteta is looking for.

Šeško is a traditional number nine who generally stays central and looks to use pace, strength, height and late movement to force himself into spaces and score goals inside the penalty area, while Gyökeres is slightly more fluid and positionally flexible, happy to hit the channels and wings to find room and support attacks – as was Gabriel Jesus, Arteta’s first attempt at signing a number nine. Signing Šeško would represent an about-turn on Arsenal’s apparent plans, and would require a change of attacking dynamic. On the other hand, he is a willing runner in the high press and happy to get back and defend, which is something Arteta tends to look for.

Tottenham Hotspur

Spurs’ name has only cropped up recently and we’re not sure of the veracity of reports suggesting they’re interested, but they are definitely in the market for a striker and Šeško seems to match the kind of profile Ange Postecoglou is looking for.

Spurs want a physical number nine who can operate well in the box and leave players like Son Heung-Min to do the more nimble work outside, and that’s precisely what Šeško does. He’s an ‘old fashioned’ number nine who’s quick and powerful, and Spurs have already been heavily linked with a similar (but less in-form) player in Feyenoord’s Santiago Giménez. Throw in the fact that he’ll happily graft in the press, something that’s a requirement for a Postecoglou player, and this does seem like a good fit – but Šeško would be giving up Champions League football if he moved to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this summer.

Chelsea

Finally, there’s Chelsea – Šeško is young, talented and probably quite expensive, so he certainly fits the recent transfer strategy to a T. The question is whether they want to move to a ‘proper’ number nine or not.

Pace and ability outside the box have been the hallmarks of the players they’ve signed in attack in recent times, and while Šeško is certainly fast, he isn’t a great technician and his passing is quite poor. In other words, it isn’t worth signing him if you expect him to drop deep and create as often as he is intended to be the last man. That doesn’t seem like a clear-cut match for the way Mauricio Pochettino has lined things up at Stamford Bridge so far, but then Chelsea’s transfer dealings haven’t always been logical over the last couple of years.