Last week, Ralph Hasenhuttl wasted little time distancing Southampton from reports linking Toulouse forward Zakaria Aboukhlal with a January move to the Premier League outfit.
“Who?” Hasenhuttl asked. “No, never heard (of him). There are a lot of reports out there for players. “But we have no transfer window now, so it surprises me a little bit that it’s coming up now!”
Then again, January is not a million miles away. We are now less than two months from the opening of the winter window, and Hasenhuttl can expect similar questions over the next couple of weeks, particularly with a Southampton side who have just 11 goals from 13 games crying out for some attacking reinforcements.
The Sun says that signing new centre-forward is Hasenhuttl’s top priority. But a chance to bring Shakhtar Donetsk’s skilful Brazilian Tete to St Mary’s is one that will surely tempt the under-pressure Saints boss into a change of tack; especially if the winger is available for a fraction of his once sky-high, £25 million price-tag, with his Shakhtar contract expiring next summer.
Could Tete finally join Southampton from Shakhtar Donetsk?
Tete, The Sun says, hopes to seal a permanent move in January. He is currently on loan at Lyon but, despite scoring five times and setting up three more goals in 11 Ligue 1 games, looks certain to be on his way out the door following the appointment of Laurent Blanc as Peter Bosz’s replacement. Tete has played just five minutes of football in Blanc’s first three games at the helm.
The 22-year-old might not be an out-and-out striker, but this does not mean he cannot go some way to solving Southampton’s goalscoring problem. He’s averaging a goal every other game for Lyon, despite lining up wide on the right. He also hit double figures in 2021/22.
“Tete is a special player,” says former coach Bosz. “I have known him for a long time. I was surprised to see that a player like Tete was signed by OL. Normally, this kind of player is unattainable for OL.”
The Saints’ best forward since Sadio Mane
Tete only ended up at Lyon after the Premier League blocked Southampton’s attempts to lure him to the South Coast earlier this year, per 90Min; the one-time West Ham and Leicester target given permission to leave Shakhtar outside of the transfer window following the Russian invasion.
There would be no such red tape this time around.
And should Southampton seize the chance to finally get Tete through the door, they will be signing an immediate upgrade on the likes of Moi Elyounoussi, Moussa Djenepo, Adam Armstrong and Theo Walcott. In terms of natural talent and goalscoring threat, Tete could be their most gifted attacker since Sadio Mane.
So while a winger might not be Hasenhuttl’s top priority, Tete feels like an opportunity too good to turn down.
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