Jakub Blaszczykowski: Liverpool Close in on £7M Bundesliga Star Winger!
Reports suggest Liverpool will launch a fresh £7m bid for Borussia Dortmund winger Jakub Blaszczykowski in the summer as long as the player proves his fitness following a long injury lay-off.
Though the 23-year-old Polish international is relatively unknown of in this country, he is highly-rated in Europe and would finally add balance and competiiton to the right-side of midfield without sacrificing the team’s work ethic.
Blaszczykowski is an attacking right winger and would finally provide expertise in that position to a Reds side that has been using Dutch forward Dirk Kuyt in that role. The Anfield giants remain contenders for the Premier League and have an extremely strong spine to their team but have been criticised for sometimes lacking the width and guile that Manchester United possess. However, Albert Riera’s summer arrival and the increasing interest in Blaszczykowski suggests that the width and dribbling ability the team has been crying out for will be in place this summer.
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The Polish international begun his career with Wisla Krakow in his homeland. He made a total of 51 League appearances over 3 seasons and scored 4 goals before a 3 million Euro move to Germany.
In his first season in the Bundesliga, Blaszczykowski impressed playing the majority of the time on the right wing where his pace and dribbling ability could be used to maximum affect. However, he has also been used as a wing-back on occasions so his versatility would certainly appeal to Benitez.
The 5 ft 9 winger made 24 League appearances (22 starts) in his debut season for Borussia as the club finished a disappointing 13th. However, this season the team have performed well and are currently 7th in the Bundesliga although. Blaszczykowski has only played in 22 league games (18 starts) after being sidelined through injury. His impact on the side cannot be underestimated. After all, since his return to fitness, Borussia have won all 4 of their league matches home and away.
The 23-year-old has made 21 appearances for his country and scored twice. He was unfortunate not to play a part at Euro 2008 as he had to withdraw through to injury despite being named in the squad. In fact, the winger was a key component to Poland’s excellent qualification campaign as was sorely missed in the finals. Blaszczykowski made his debut in March 2006 but was not called up to the final 2006 World Cup squad so has been rather unfortunate at international level not to feature in two major finals.
If he does sign for Liverpool then their fans won’t have to worry about getting his long name on the back of their replica shirts as he usually prefers ‘Kuba’ as a shortened version of his Christian name. If Benitez can bring in this quick, talented winger then Liverpool will be even stronger in terms of balance and personnel for next season’s campaign.
Do you feel the club needs a new right winger or is Dirk Kuyt good enough? Would the signing of a good right winger give the squad the added attacking quality to finish the opposition off in tight matches? Let’s hear your views.
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