Mitrovic to Al Hilal gets the ‘here we go’ after Fulham accept offer worth £42.7m | OneFootball

Aleksandar Mitrovic is heading to Al Hilal

Aleksandar Mitrovic is finally on his way to Al Hilal after the Serbia striker got the ‘green light’ from Fulham to complete a move to the Saudi Pro League side.

Al Hilal have been chasing the centre-forward for much of the summer, with the Cottagers rejected a series of offers which started at £25.5million.

Mitrovic has expressed his desire to be allowed to take up the lucrative offer and Fabrizio Romano is reporting that Fulham have relented after receiving a satisfactory bid.

The west London side will receive more than £42.7million for the striker who has scored 111 goals in 206 games since joining from Newcastle in 2017.

Mitrovic will reportedly undergo a medical in Paris before heading to Saudi Arabia.

After his side’s 3-0 home defeat to Brentford on Saturday, Marco Silva confirmed Mitrovic is off to Saudi Arabia.

He said: “He forced everything to leave the club, he wanted to leave the club.”

Silva was asked on Friday ahead of the clash with Brentford about reports that an agreement had been reached.

“No, I don’t have this information,” Silva said.

“He is out of the game because he rolled his ankle in the last game, he is not working with his team-mates because he is injured.

“Raul (Jiminez) is going to start.

“I am focusing on the game – we have people who take care of it (transfer business).

“The injury is not going to be something serious where he will be out of competition for three, four weeks.”

Silva praised Jimenez, who joined from Wolves for a fee understood to be in the region of £5.5million this summer, and says his “skills” can help Fulham.

The Mexican scored 17 times in the Premier League in the 2019/20 season but has struggled for goals over the last two campaigns following his return from a serious head injury suffered in November 2020.

But Silva believes he can help the striker return to his former level.

The manager said: “We hope (he can find his old form), we are here to help him like we helped our other players in the last two seasons.

“With what we’ve managed with the other players in my time at Fulham, I think we can do the same with Raul.

“We can see he has very good skills to help us and he offers different things for us.“Last season sometimes we missed not having a mobile striker, Raul can give us this and I am confident we can keep him on a very good level. Goals will help him.

“I knew him very well in Portugal before he came to the Premier League. When he is in a very good moment he can score, he is strong with the head, he can attack the space, can play with both feet and can finish as well.

“His numbers in his first two, three seasons were impressive and he helped his team to be stronger, but it is now up to us to help him and make him go further to the level he can be.”

Jimenez is one of three summer signings for the west London club alongside defender Calvin Bassey from Ajax and Adama Traore on a free transfer.

And Silva called for further additions before the end of the transfer window.

He said: “The reality is our reality and we are short in numbers in some positions. We have only two full-backs in our squad, that means we need two more full-backs to come to our football club and we need at least two more positions to join our squad.”