Luka Jovic has already made the AC Milan management change their strategy for the January transfer window and now he hopes to earn a new contract too.
Calciomercato.com write that if Milan have even started to think about being able to get back into the Scudetto fight, they owe it almost exclusively to Jovic as the turning point arrived at the beginning of December, which is when he started scoring.
The numbers don’t lie and, as we know, the first part of the season until the end of November the decision to sign Jovic on a free transfer at the end of the summer window looked like a mistake.
Then something finally clicked in him and the work on the training pitch began to pay off. He has seven shots on target and four goals scored in Serie A plus almost 80% of passes completed of which six were considered key passes for his team-mates.
He has one assist and one big chance created, and finally over 50% of duels won (including aerial ones). Jovic is at the top in Serie A for impact off the bench, netting three times, and he has a goal every 118 minutes played on average.
Jovic’s contract is set to expire at the end of the season but before the game against Udinese – another one the striker scored in – technical director Geoffrey Moncada spoke about his future.
“We’ll talk later, we want Luka to work well and score. Then we’ll talk calmly,” he stated. There is calm because the Serbian signed a one-year deal at €1.3m net, but there is a club option to extend it for another year.
Milan’s mercato strategy has already changed because of his goals. Serhou Guirassy of Stuttgart was a target for January but the decision was made to divert the budget towards a defender, postponing a striker signing until the summer.
A new centre-forward will arrive in a few months, and then Jovic and Giroud would in theory be playing the back-up role. Both are on expiring deals, so Milan will have to make a decision on both, but at the moment the pitch is doing the talking.
