Aston Villa are keeping tabs on the situation of a talented attacking midfielder who only signed for his current club last summer.
Unai Emery has welcomed his Aston Villa players back for pre-season as the Spanish coach looks to prepare his squad for the Champions League next season.
After the required sales of Tim Iroegbunam, Omari Kellyman and Douglas Luiz to comply with PSR threatened to dampen the mood this summer, Villa are now full-steam ahead in their efforts to improve the squad.
That has already seen real quality added, with the likes of Samuel Iling-Junior, Ross Barkley and Ian Maatsen all signed, but Emery plans to continue to add to his squad with a move for a Napoli midfielder.
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Aston Villa interested in Napoli’s Jesper Lindstrom
That player is Jesper Lindstrom, who only signed for the Naples club last summer.
The Dane was linked with a move to Liverpool last summer – the club he supports – but instead decided to move to Napoli from Eintracht Frankfurt with a view to greater game time.
It is a move that has not quite worked out as hoped, though, with Lindstrom starting just two league games and failing to register a single goal or assist in his 29 games in all competitions for the Italian club.
With that in mind, Napoli could be open to sell the 24-year-old; particularly as they are looking to raise funds to make a move for Mason Greenwood, whose future surely lies outside of England.
That is according to Italian outlet La Gazzetta dello Sport, who report that Lindstrom is ‘in the crosshairs of Everton and Aston Villa’ with the €30 million (£25m) fee to be ‘reinvested in Greenwood’.
Lindstrom would offer Unai Emery something different in Aston Villa midfield
Whilst he has not necessarily shown it so far at Napoli, Lindstrom is an attacking midfielder who loves to create and score goals.
In 80 games for Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany the Denmark international scored 14 goals and provided a further 14 assists in all competitions.
His team-mate in Germany, goalkeeper Kevin Trapp, said in 2022 on Lindstrom: “Jesper is very young and came from a different league.
“The Bundesliga is a tougher league than the Danish league, you have to get used to it. It’s normal, and everyone in the club and the team knows that.
“Jesper has already made significant steps forward… you can see that he’s an outstanding footballer and has very good technique.”
Villa could swoop to capitalise on the talented midfielder’s lack of game time at Napoli to add a player who can not only play as an attacking midfielder but out wide too.
