Fulham haven’t spent all that much in this transfer window, with the majority of the deals they’ve completed being loan moves.
Alphonse Areola, Ola Aina and Ademola Lookman have all arrived on loan from abroad so far, while Mario Lemina joined on a temporary basis from Southampton.
The signing of Lemina means that, due to the rules, the Whites can only bring in one more Premier League player on loan, and with both William Saliba and Ruben Loftus-Cheek on the Whites’ radar, they may soon have a big decision to make.
Only one of Saliba or Loftus-Cheek can now be brought in on loan, and with both of those players seemingly being better options than Lemina, Fulham’s August swoop for the Gabonese midfielder is beginning to look rather silly.
Would you rather have a centre-back valued at £27m and an England international or a Southampton flop? It seems like a no-brainer to us, and Tony Khan’s move for Lemina is already starting to look daft.
Khan wasn’t to know that Saliba and Loftus-Cheek would become viable moves on deadline day, but using up a valuable loan spot on a midfielder who can’t even get into your first-team wasn’t the best idea in hindsight.
Lemina is yet to start a single league game for the Whites, and if Loftus-Cheek is brought in he may drop even further down the pecking order, and even worse, that would leave the London club unable to sign Arsenal’s French defender.
Fulham are no strangers to bad decisions in the transfer market, but their bad signings usually take more than a couple of months to be judged as such.
Khan has now been left with a huge dilemma to choose between the Chelsea man and the Arsenal youngster, and it will be interesting to see who they opt for.