Al-Hilal make fresh £46m bid for Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic after £78m capture of Neymar… with west London side keen on Demarai Gray, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Timothy Castagne
Al-Hilal have offered £46m for Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic after signing Neymar from Paris St Germain in a £77.6million deal.
Neymar, 31, has agreed a two year contract on a reputed £129million a year and 28-year-old Mitrovic hopes to join him.
Fulham want closer to £50m and are working on deals to sign Everton‘s Demarai Gray, Callum Hudson-Odoi from Chelsea and Timothy Castagne from Leicester City though their offer for the Belgian is considerably short of the Championship side’s valuation.
Mitrovic recently returned to training with Fulham though manager Marco Silva admit the situation ‘is not easy’ after his star striker was left unsettled by interest from Saudi Arabia.
Previously, Mitrovic was not training with the rest of Silva’s squad after reportedly vowing never to play for the club again having seen the Londoners turn down offers from Al-Hilal which would have allowed him to join the growing list of players making lucrative summer moves to the Saudi Pro League.
Al-Hilal have offered £46m for unsettled Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic (above)
Neymar has been unveiled as an Al-Hilal player after sealing his £78m move from PSG
Ahead of Fulham’s final Premier League Summer Series pre-season fixture against Chelsea , Silva said: ‘Yes, Mitrovic is back. It is a process and it is not an easy situation. I am not here to talk about the negotiations and clubs that are linked with him. I am here to talk about my players. Yes, he is with the group. Let’s hope we get him as fit as we can in the next few days.
‘For me, Mitrovic never was hard to manage. Never, never, never. A lot of people say he has an aura around him but people who know him know he was never a problem or difficult to manage. We have to be honest with him. He was so easy to manage in the beginning of the pre-season and he will be if he stays.
‘Mitro knows me, I know him very well. He knows the group we are working with. Everything I said to him and everything he said to me will be between me and him.’
Neymar was pictured in an Al-Hilal kit for the first time on Tuesday after sealing his £78million switch from Paris Saint-Germain.
The Brazilian was seen speaking to the Saudi club’s fans in a video on their social media pages where he is heard saying: ‘I am here in Saudi Arabia’.
He becomes the latest superstar to make the switch the Kingdom, following the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Sadio Mane to the globe’s biggest emerging football division.
He rejected the possibility of a loan move to his former club Barcelona, which would have included an option to buy him outright next year.
