Should your club buy Mika Biereth?

In our last rumours roundup, Ted mentioned that Everton have been linked to Monaco striker Mika Biereth, and that clubs with quite a bit more spending power might be eyeing him up. So we thought we should give a closer look to a guy who’s been running insanely hot since he moved in January.

We highlighted Biereth’s transfer from Sturm Graz to Monaco for an extremely reasonable €13m in a January window roundup, concluding that it looked like a very good deal. As a reminder, here’s what Biereth was doing in Austria before he made that transfer.

He quickly made an impact with this hat trick in 8 minutes against Auxerre.

And he’s been putting up absolutely ridiculous stats since, in pretty much every department. His 11 non-penalty goals in 1120 minutes are outrageous on their own, but he’s doing a bit of everything for Monaco.

Biereth is pressing, setting up teammates, and beating defenders regularly with his dribbling just as often as he’s getting quality shots off.

A thing I really like about Biereth is his shot selection. His volume isn’t off the charts, but when he does shoot, it’s from a great position. When he doesn’t have a high quality shot, he passes or tries to dribble into a better position.

He doesn’t have a lot of shots immediately preceded by a dribble, though, which is an area for improvement. His dribble and carry numbers suggest he has those skills, but he hasn’t quite translated them into setting up shots yet.

Biereth possesses a good combination of willingness to take the responsibility to score goals with unselfishness, taking advantage of Monaco’s tactics usually supplying him with a good secondary shooter to pass to. He’s frequently played with Breel Embolo as a strike partner, while Takumi Minamino has played as a cut-inside left winger and occasionally as a second striker Biereth has set up quite a few shots for both in good locations.

But obviously 11 goals from 6.7 npxG is not sustainable, and Biereth has unsurprisingly cooled off a bit over his last 3 games. Still, despite going three games without scoring or putting up great shot volume, he’s still sitting at an excellent 0.54 xG per 90 minutes. Biereth is not going to score a goal per game at his next club, but his shot and key pass locations look super legit. I’m confident that he’s a very good, Champions League caliber striker.

I think Biereth has enough pace and strength to make a positive contribution to any type of team, but I see him as more of a space creator than a space exploiter, and his hold-up play is adequate, not exceptional. I think he’d be a better signing for a team that has a lot of possession and faces a lot of low blocks than one that tries to exploit space in behind or play on the counter frequently. Like perhaps, Arsenal… the team that sold him to Sturm Graz for £4m.

If Monaco actually do want flip Biereth for a reasonable fee and he’s willing to sign for Everton, they should make that move because they’re not getting a better striker. But I think it’s more likely that Biereth stays at Monaco for one more year or gets sold to a much richer club. —KM

Other transfer rumours:

• Spurs crushed the “which team should we rebuild next” poll from Tuesday’s newsletter, so we’ll be getting to them third after Man United and Liverpool.

• The Man United rumour mill has gotten completely batshit crazy. I found links to 7 different players from reporters who put their name on stuff and have gotten things right before, though obviously everyone who isn’t Ornstein has a pretty dubious track record on transfer stuff. They are: Matheus Cunha, Victor Osimhen, Liam Delap, Jean-Philippe Mateta, Bruno Guimares, Adam Wharton, and Franco Mastantuono. United can maybe afford to sign 2 of those players.

• Florian Plettenberg says Bayer Leverkusen have asked Manchester City about James McAtee, and I think that City should consider doing the Real Madrid Loan more often. Madrid has frequently sold their academy products for cheap fees, but with reasonable buyback clauses and big sell-on clauses. Get some PSR relief and get the player some playing time now, but hedge against potential future progression.

• Kingsley Coman seems to prefer getting paid in Saudi Arabia over a Premier League move after figuring out that the good teams aren’t biting.

• A new center back that we haven’t discussed here is starting to get linked to big clubs. 24-year-old Lazio defender Mario Gila is a new popular rumour mill name, with “the likes of Spurs, PSG and Bayern Munich interested,” meaning his agent is a top-tier yapper. He’s an interesting one; nothing in the air but very good on the ball. I feel like he fits an outside of a back 3 profile better than a back 4 team.

• Ben Jacobs says Juventus are moving for regular newsletter highlighted player Giorgi Sudakov, who I think would solve a lot of their midfield playmaking problems.

• In what would be a very funny transfer, Arsenal would be interested in signing midfielder Andrey Santos if Chelsea opt to sell him. I’d personally give him a chance in the first team after his impressive year at Strasbourg if I was running Chelsea, but those 3 new goalkeepers and 2 new Jorge Mendes client attackers aren’t going to pay for themselves.

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