Southampton reportedly want to sign attacker who is being tipped to 'kill it' in the Premier League

11/14/2024 07:45 AM

According to his chairman, the Southampton and Ipswich Town target has the potential to become a £30 million Premier League star.

Unfortunately for Darragh MacAnthony, it will not be his Peterborough United side banking an eight-figure sum.

Because Kwame Poku – the winger is on Southampton and Ipswich’s radar amongst others, TBR understands – is currently entering the final eight months of his contract at London Road.

The chances are that, with Burnley, Millwall and Rangers also keeping a very close eye on his situation, Poku will leave either on a cut-price fee in January or during the summer of 2025.

After 10 goals and seven assists in just 17 games this season, Peterborough’s hope of extracting maximum value from the EFL’s most productive attacker look dead in the water, provided Poku has little interest in putting pen to paper on fresh terms.

Though the bullish MacAnthony insists that Peterborough can still expect a ‘minimum’ of £6 million, should any deal for Poku eventually go to a tribunal.

That might not be £30 million, of course, but it’s better than nothing.

Peterborough want at least £6m as Southampton eye Kwame Poku

"[Tribunals will] look at a lot of things," MacAnthony says on the latest edition of his on Hard Truth podcast.

"They'll look at how long he's been with you. He'll have been with us four years, he'll have played probably 200 games.

"They'll look at the offers we've had. So we'll be able to straight away go into the tribunal and show them offers from six months ago that were of the value £3m up front and [another] £3m in add-ons.

"We will expect minimum [£6 million].”

Peterborough United have proven to be a reliable jumping-off point over the years for numerous talented youngsters with ambitions of climbing the footballing pyramid. Dwight Gayle, Sammie Szmodics and Ivan Toney, to name but three, all ended up in the Premier League after graduating from the Peterborough finishing school.

Southampton snapped up Peterborough’s Ronnie Edwards a few months ago, meanwhile, and could now return to a familiar watering hole for Poku.

And MacAnthony is confident that Poku has a few stand-out attributes which make the former Colchester United ace perfectly suited to top-flight football.

Darragh MacAnthony convinced by winger’s Premier League potential

"A fair price for someone like Kwame is in the millions and millions and millions," MacAnthony adds.

“He's going to be one of those players who probably, in three years’ time, will go for £30m-plus, if I was a guessing man.

"He'll be one of them who'll go Championship, Premier League, and then he'll go bang again, because he's got physicality, he's got pace, he's got technique that's top drawer. He's got an appetite, he's ever-present, all those things…

"He will kill it in the Premier League.”

A right winger who likes to cut in onto his left, Poku would give Russell Martin another option on the flank. Tyler Dibling shone for Southampton at the start of the season, while Adam Armstrong has been used in a wider role of late.