JibrinLeicester City let red-hot striker slip through the net with echoes of £20m mistake
Tawanda Maswanhise has been linked with a transfer to Rangers, Celtic and Anderlecht over the past couple of months as he leads the Scottish Premiership scoring charts
Leicester City’s lack of a goal-scoring striker has been one of the sore points of a miserable campaign so far.
Jordan Ayew may have taken Jamie Vardy’s number nine shirt, but he has not delivered any of the cunning and penalty-box danger of City’s legendary forward.
Patson Daka may have ended his year-long goal drought in November, but he’s been unable to build on that.
If not for Jordan James’ late runs into the box and Abdul Fatawu’s long-range strikes, City would be really struggling in attack.
What is perhaps adding to the frustration is the success of one of the club’s former prospects north of the border.
Motherwell’s Tawanda Maswanhise netted twice more over the weekend to take his Scottish Premiership tally to a league-leading 16, while he has 21 goals in all competitions.
The 23-year-old is in his second season at Motherwell and his goals are ensuring that they are in the title hunt in what is potentially the most exciting finish to a Scottish Premiership season in years.
And it feels like a tally that is going to earn him a big-money move over the summer. Rangers, Celtic, Anderlecht and Blackburn were all linked with interest in January, with suggestions of seven-figure bids tabled for the Zimbabwe international.
“Tawanda has attracted an extreme amount of interest from all over the world and from the UK,” Motherwell boss Jens Berthel Askou said at the start of February.
“There have been offers but they have been at an amount that is nowhere near the valuation put on him. It has been very easy to say, ‘Well no, now is not the time to sell’.
“Did anyone try late on? Yes, but there was no discussion. The plan was never for him to leave now.”
But when asked if summer interest was likely, Askou replied: “We absolutely expect that to be the case.
“We also expect clubs to start coming in earlier as they will have to be in a little bit better time than some were now.
“The interest is only going up for him, because he’s a good player and he will keep scoring goals and developing.
“The summer window is also usually a little bigger and all eyes are on him. More clubs will be interested in him, probably in bigger markets. So I expect it to be a busy summer around him.”
It’s not just that Maswanhise is scoring regularly, it’s that they let him go for nothing. The forward could be the subject of a multi-million pound transfer this summer, all for a player they could have kept.
Often playing as a winger during his days in the youth setup, Maswanhise was always highly rated as a teenager, and impressed in his outings for the first team in pre-season.
Once in the Under-21s, he scored frequently. But it never translated to first-team opportunities, Maswanhise only making one senior appearance for the club, as a substitute in the FA Cup under Enzo Maresca.
If more belief had been placed in him, and more chances given to him, he could still be at the club now, and it may have been City benefiting from his remarkable development, and his goals.
City have not let many players slip through the net, but Maswanhise’s potential does echo the progress made by Calvin Bassey.
He also left City for nothing to move to Scotland, doing so well for Rangers that he earned a £20m transfer to Ajax. While that did not pay off, he has since moved to Fulham, where he has cemented himself as a Premier League regular.
Jibrin
