According to ESPN, Newcastle United are lining up a move for RB Leipzig goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi.
Benitez is known to be a longtime admirer of Peter Gulacsi. In fact, he was the one who found him as a 17-year-old, in his Liverpool days. Even though Gulacsi didn’t feature in a single competitive game for the Liverpool first team, since then, he has accumulated a substantial amount of experience playing in the English second tier, Austrian Bundesliga and he’s currently with RB Leipzig in the German top division.
He also featured for Hull City for a short period of time, before being released by Liverpool in 2013. He was quickly snapped up by RB Salzburg in Austria where he won two back to back league and cup titles in his two seasons in Austria before making the move to Leipzig in the summer of 2015.
Two years later, Gulacsi has successfully established himself as the number one goalkeeper for the Bundesliga marketing giants. He played an important role in Leipzig’s debut season in the Bundesliga, where they sensationally finished second, ahead of clubs like Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen and Schalke 04.
However, as cheesy as it sounds, Peter Gulacsi hasn’t really been particularly impressive at Leipzig so far. Last season, the Hungarian International made only 47 saves in 33 games. That’s a measly 1.42 saves per game, very poor, considering Leipzig had faced almost three shots on goal, which is actually second best in the league.
Enough to explain that Leipzig do have a pretty solid defence and the fact that Gulacsi had kept nine clean sheets last season in largely down to defensive men in the backline for Ralph Hasenhuttl’s men. Gulacsi has a ratio of 1.24 saves per goal, which in itself isn’t a great tally either.
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RB Leipzig have probably realised that it’s time they need to upgrade their fortification between the sticks and thus, they have already signed keeper Yann Mvogo from Young Boys.
They will also have Marius Muller as their second choice goalkeeper in case Peter Gulacsi does leave the Red Bull Arena. Newcastle United, on the other hand, already have three goalkeepers in their squad. Tim Krul has returned from his loan spell at AZ, while Rob Elliot and Karl Darlow are the two other keepers in the team.
One would also sense that the Magpies also need an upgrade to their goalkeeping position. However, Peter Gulacsi is perhaps not an ideal choice around, even though coach Rafa Benitez values the Hungarian goalkeeper higher than any regular Bundesliga viewer like me generally do.
It all adds to the exciting final weeks of the transfer window, where we will finally get to witness, which deals will happen and which will break into the ground. Leipzig are at risk of losing several other key players in the team as well, with Naby Keita and Emil Forsberg highly linked with a move away from the Bundesliga.
[Stats are taken from Squawka and Footballintheclouds]
