When Guillem Balague took to Twitter late last month to announce that four Premier League clubs – Southampton, Crystal Palace, Brighton and Wolverhampton Wanderers – were taking a closer look at Flamengo striker Pedro, the claims certainly seemed watertight.
The one-time Brazil international was in the form of his life after all.
He’d scored an impressive 41 goals since joining Flamengo in the summer of 2020 and even attracted a near-£30 million bid from Palmeiras. A bid that would have made him the most expensive signing in the history of the Brazilian top-flight.
But, three weeks after Balague’s Tweet catapulted Pedro into the gossip columns, the 24-year-old striker could hardly have picked a worse time to lose his way.
This goal-machine has most certainly malfunctioned.
Can Pedro find form before it’s too late?
He’s now failed to score in his last ten games for Flamengo. That makes this the longest goal-scoring drought in Pedro’s time at the 2020 Brazilian champions, and in his senior career as a whole.
“(The lack of goals) doesn’t seem like something I can fix,” protests under-fire manager Paulo Sousa, via ToceDores.
“We work a lot on the finishing (and) we seek to give players opportunities to create goal-scoring situations. We have created chances.”
That’s all well and good. The problem is, with Pedro misplacing his goalscoring boots, those chances continue to go by the wayside.
Carry on like this and Pedro won’t be attracting many big money bids from the Premier League over the summer months.
“Flamengo rejected a 35 million dollar offer from Palmeiras which would have made him the most expensive exchange between South American teams ever,” Balague said in March.
“Flamengo doesn’t sell to rivals. But (they) would sell to European clubs for around 20 million dollars (£15 million).”
At the moment, however, Pedro is not even performing like a £5 million striker, let alone a £15 million one.
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