Brighton and Hove Albion break transfer record for striker Jurgen Locadia
This is not a drill. Brighton and Hove Albion have finally signed a striker following the club record £14m capture of Jurgen Locadia from PSV Eindhoven.
The Dutchman signs on a two-and-a-half-year deal but won’t be available to play until February as he recovers from a hamstring problem that has kept him out for the last month.
Locadia has spent his entire career at PSV, announcing himself in some style as an 18-year-old with a 22 minute hat-trick on his league debut from the substitutes bench against VVV Venlo in 2012. He has since gone onto net 62 goals in 178 games for PSV, including nine in 18 so far this season.
His domestic honours haul is an impressive one with two Eredivisie titles in 2015 and 2016 and two Dutch Super Cups in the same years. Those were won alongside current Albion midfielder Davy Propper.
Locadia looked set to move to current Championship leaders Wolves in the summer until PSV pulled the plug on the deal at the last minute. Instead, he now finds himself in the Premier League and avoiding he nightmare scenario of having to live in Wolverhampton.
He has been used either through the middle or on either side of a 4-3-3 for PSV so it will be interesting to see how Chris Hughton deploys him although the manager using the terms “strong and powerful” to describe him suggest that the lone striker role currently occupied by Glenn Murray will be where he fits in.
It is notoriously difficult to judge how a signing from the Netherlands will do in England. For every Luis Suarez or Robin van Persie, there is at least four players who have set the Eredivisie alight but then been utter crap once they cross the North Sea.
Hughton in particular will hope it is third time lucky for himself personally in terms of signing Dutch forwards, with the brilliantly named Ricky van Wolfswinkel and Elvis Manu two expensive failures he bought to both Norwich City and ourselves.
Locadia will wear the number 25 shirt and will hope to hit the heights scaled by previous incumbents who include Steve Claridge, Mark McCammon, Scott Chamberlain, Kazenga LuaLua and that Bobby bloke who scored a few times.
