I'm not even going to pretend I've seen Vlahovic play, but do you have any worries about signing a striker off the back of their first good goalscoring season? Now, he's only 21 so that's absolutely not a mark against him, but our transfer strategy is usually centred on minimising risk. And signing a striker who has only had one season where he scored more than 10 league goals feels risky to me. Especially when you consider he's never played in the Champions League/Europa League.
On the contrary, it could be that he's just starting to explode and his trajectory will continue upwards - in which case it's the perfect time to get him in. But for me, it feels inherently risky and the type of transfer Edwards wouldn't usually do (assuming he's going to cost a decent wedge).
I'd normally say the same, that maybe there's not enough data to go at. However, being a follower of Fiorentina and watching most of their matches I would say that buying him now for £30m - £40m is going to get you a quality player two years ahead of maybe battling with Juve or Milan or whoever to buy him for £80m. Indeed, Milan are heavily linked. He just has a lot of quality and physical capabilities and I'm going to say something I normally wouldn't, as I'm pretty stats driven generally, but you can just tell he's going to be a top quality player.
He's dragged a dreadful Fiorentina team through this season and if they stay up, which is by no means certain, it will largely be down to him. Chiesa has more assists for the team than anyone except Vlahovic and Ribery and he played two games before moving to Juve at the start of the season.
Vlahovic for me is one who if I was going off the data youtube, or a handful of live performances (which can be the case with players I bring up in here), I'd say let him move elsewhere or monitor another season at Fiorentina. As it is, I think this guy would hit the ground running and produce pretty much straight away. It's good that Fiorentina signed him when they did and managed his minutes when he was still a teenager, otherwise he could have had well over senior 150 appearances before he was even 19 - he's been playing senior football since 15. Don't think Zigic or Mitrovic though, think Haaland or even Van Nistelrooy.
He looks really interesting getting 3+ shots off in a bad team at 19/20 in one of the big leagues is a great easy filter for top level potential ... haven't watched him but if his movement is good as you say he could make sense
He has that knack of great strikers to always seem to have easy tap ins - his movement is excellent and he actually attacks the box. I think due to all of the noise around Haaland he's slipped under the radar somewhat. When bearing down on goal, he has a knack of making it look like he's taken an overly heavy touch, which commits the goalkeeper, then he finds an extra yard and stretches a long leg out to dink it over the onrushing keeper. It's a canny little trick he pulls off with enough regularity to say it's purposeful.
If you personally said to me: 'here's £50m to sign one attacker,' - I'd be on a flight to Florence. Fiorentina, bless them, are dreadful - they're currently just about sitting above relegation based on scraped wins against the weakest teams in the league. They've only won twice in the last ten and that was against teams below them.
