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Budget Midfielders For Europe's Top-Five Leagues & Udinese Recruitment Analysis 2025/2026

Budget Midfielders For Europe's Top-Five Leagues & Udinese Recruitment Analysis 2025/2026

Today, we have a player analysis piece focusing on four budget midfielders for clubs in Europe's top-five leagues to consider along with a recruitment analysis on Udinese's search for a Lorenzo Lucca replacement.

August 02, 2025

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Today’s TFA Posts ⚽

Budget Midfielders For Europe's Top-Five Leagues - Analysis

Welcome to another instalment of our budget-friendly series.

First, we released a list of four budget-friendly strikers who could join middle- or low-level clubs in Europe’s top-five leagues.

Now, we’re moving on to midfielders.

The idea is the same: to find affordable midfielders with decent attributes, numbers or qualities for clubs with limited budgets.

Generally speaking, this summer is not the summer of the midfielder.

Midfielder transfers don’t generate as much hype as striker transfers.

Yes, there have been notable transfers involving midfielders like Florian Wirtz to Liverpool, Tijjani Reijnders to Manchester City, Martin Zubimendi to Arsenal, and Jobe Bellingham to Borussia Dortmund.

However, this piece won’t focus on transfers of that calibre.

Instead, it will focus on relatively cheap midfielders (anything less than €20m) who are also valuable.

As with the striker list, this one is also not only for young, promising players because, again, that’s perhaps what the club needs—and there’s nothing wrong with that; the transfer market should be as broad as possible.

So, here is the list.

Budget Midfielders For Europe's Top-Five Leagues - Analysis

Udinese Recruitment Analysis: Finding A Striker With Data

Following the departure of their star striker, Lorenzo Lucca, who has joined Napoli, Udinese’s technical director, Gökhan Inler, has recently stated that the team is actually searching for alternative strikers to try replacing Lucca with a striker who has similar attributes and can lead the team to a higher spot than last season in Serie A.

Given that Inler expressed the club’s desire to sign a striker and that they are monitoring the situation of approximately five or six, the idea of this data analysis will be to “help” Udinese pick the most adequate choice regarding the replacement of Lucca based on numerous criteria.

In fact, this tactical analysis takes into account the club’s financial situation and value.

Given that Udinese are neither one of the biggest clubs in Europe nor one of the richest, our research avoids focusing on players from the top tier, excluding all of La Liga, the Premier League, and the German Bundesliga.

Only one player from the French Ligue 1 and two players from Serie A were picked in the data analysis, knowing that Udinese are capable of negotiating with French clubs or specific Serie A players like the ones mentioned in the chosen list of the potential Udinese strikers.

The rest of the names are good enough strikers to suit Udinese’s level and provide the needed attacking addition, as Udinese cannot really negotiate with much better players.

That’s why it was more realistic to opt for the best candidates from the leagues just behind the top three ones, as players from the big teams would automatically refuse Udinese’s offers, especially if they are starters in their respective teams.