The mighty £30m January transfer target Fulham should go all out to sign this summer

The bad news for Fulham fans is that João Palhinha is almost certainly going to get his move this time around. After his deadline-day transfer to Bayern Munich collapsed at the eleventh hour in January, the German giants are back in the bidding and while the Cottagers are playing hardball over the price for now, they know the Portuguese midfielder will be leaving pretty soon – and that’s why they’ve reportedly begun the process of signing his replacement.

André’s name won’t be new to Fulham fans. He’s been repeatedly linked with a move to the Premier League – usually either to Fulham or Liverpool – for a year now, and the 22-year-old had a move blocked by his club Fluminense in January as they didn’t feel ready to sell. Things have now changed, however, and it seems as though their stance has softened. André will be on the move soon, and according to The Times, Fulham have already launched a £30m bid for him. But can he really replace a player as good as Palhinha?

From a strictly economic standpoint, the move makes a lot of sense. Fulham are holding out for a fee in the region of £50m - if they get close to that then swapping him for André would see the club turn a healthy profit and end up with a player who is almost seven years younger. Palhinha turns 29 in July and may well only have a few years left at his peak, whereas André is still to enter his prime and has plenty of time ahead of him.

But from a playing point of view, the answer is a little more muddled. André is a talented midfielder but a very different type of player to Palhinha, and moving from one to the other may necessitate a change in style from manager Marco Silva.

With a midfield featuring Palhinha and Andreas Pereira (who may yet move away himself this summer), Fulham were set up to play quick, vertical football – Palhinha as the all-action one-man pressing unit who generates an absurd volume of turnovers and gets forward quickly, and Pereira as the dribbler who breaks the lines and helps to get the ball towards the forward line at pace. Silva played to his players’ strengths and set up with a game plan that focused on directness, even if that didn’t necessarily mean kick and rush.

André, however, is not the kind of midfielder who, like Palhinha, turns up all over the field putting out fires and winning possession. He’s a strong tackler who’s excellent in one-on-ones and has enough energy to get around the centre of the pitch and deal with problems, but he won’t put anywhere near as much pressure on the opposition as Palhinha does.

In fairness, very few can. Only one other player in the Premier League made more tackles last season (Sheffield United’s Vinícius Souza) and only one other midfielder came even close to the total number of tackles those two made (Palhinha’s namesake João Gomes). Every other midfielder in the top flight was miles back. Palhinha is a rare player, and finding a direct replacement would be extremely challenging - with André, they are not even trying.

André is, instead, a passer, and a better one than Palhinha. Over the last year of football with Fluminense, André has averaged just over 83 passing attempts per game with a completion rate a shade below 95% - exceptional numbers, even if playing at a slightly lower level may help to polish them up a little bit. By comparison, Palhinha averaged 44.5 passes at an 82% success rate. In other words, while André may not win the ball back half as often as the man he might well replace, he offers far more control in possession once he has it.

What he doesn’t do is create much in the way of scoring opportunities. He’s a player who controls the flow of the game but who leaves the threatening stuff in the final third to others – he has just two senior league goals to his name and hasn’t registered a goal or assist in top-level competition since 2022. He needs to have talent ahead of him, and can’t run a team on his own – but he lays down an exceptional platform for the team if the attacking players are there.

But Silva won’t be able to play such a direct game with André in his starting line-up and playing him would necessitate a slight re-think – if you’re asking the Brazilian to hustle up and down the pitch and play long, fast passes, you’re misusing him. If he’s in your side, it naturally encourages a slightly more patient, possession-based game.

If Silva can remodel his midfield and his broader strategic thinking around that fact, then switching Palhinha for André becomes a very sensible move from any angle you look at it – but what Fulham can’t do is think they can plug and play the Fluminense man has a like-for-like replacement. If they try that, then they’ll likely find they’ve downgraded too far for their liking. Either way, it may be some time before they have a player quite like Palhinha on the books again.