Southampton confirmed the signing of Dejan Lovren, without stipulating the cost, last night. The fee is rumoured to be approximately £8m which is seen as a bit of a gamble.
When Lyon signed him in January 2010 many clubs were following the young Croatian. Chelsea were among the clubs eyeing him as he had the reputation for being a highly promising young player.
His time at Lyon started slowly and in the first six months he only managed 8 appearances for his new club. His second season showed some improvement with him making 28 appearances.
Dejan is known as a brave and committed defender but injuries began to take their toll. Season 2011/12 saw him play less but come 2012/13 he was first choice centre back alongside Milan Bisevac.
An injury in November halted his run of games and when he came back into the side a series of poor games led to doubts arising over him. March saw things come to a head as Lyon suffered some seriously damaging defeats. Lovren was blamed for being chiefly responsible for the poor performances.
In a 4-1 thrashing at Bastia, Lovren was supposedly extremely poor – poorly positioned, a yard off the pace and flat-footed when up against the verve and quicksilver movement of the Corsican team.
Against Sochaux the following weak Lovren was again seen as the clear weak link in defence. He absolutely hounded by powerful striker Giovanni Sio as despite being 6`2, Lovren can tend to struggle against physically dominant target men.
After being held responsible for the second and decisive goal against Sochaux Lovren was dropped. That has now ended up being his final game for ‘Les Gones’.
His response to being dropped was not good either. He reportedly threw strops, said he wanted to leave and generally became a miserable cog in the team.
He is though still only 23 and after being touted as a highly promising player could still become a player with whom the word quality will be used. Hopefully not for the lacking of rather than the showing.
We can only hazard a guess at the moment as to how he will fare, but maybe our style of play will help him in the long run. Let’s hope so.
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