Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe will be starting to shift his attention on the transfer market after securing Champions League qualification on Monday night, and James Maddison will be at the front of the list.
What's the latest on James Maddison to Newcastle?
Whispers of Maddison's prospective transfer to Tyneside have emanated from more than just the grapevine over the past year, and a move has now never looked more likely with Leicester City taking their fight for Premier League survival to the final day of the season.
According to the Daily Mail, the Foxes phenom may have to be sold for a cut-price fee if top-flight status is not preserved; Leicester demand £50m for Maddison but, indeed, such a towering fee would be difficult to maintain after relegation, with the club already revealing record £92.5m losses earlier this year.
This is in contrast to recent reports that state the 26-year-old could still command a fee as high as £60m, though the aforementioned facets combined with the fact that Maddison has just one year left on his contract make a compelling reason for Magpies technical director Dan Ashworth to issue a swoop as he looks to cement his club's newfound stature.
What is James Maddison's style of play?
Amid the roiling waves that have submerged Leicester in woe this year, Maddison's capabilities as a superlative creative force in English football have remained intact.
For all the club's success over the past decade, the current campaign has been dragged into a state of Strum and Drang, with a return to the second tier severing the direct link to success in the Premier League, FA Cup and Community Shield, also reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League and pulling off a great escape to precede their unprecedented title victory.
Maddison has been imperative to the later stages of success, winning the two trophies and plundering 55 goals and 41 assists from 202 appearances since signing from Norwich City for £24m in 2018.
Described as a "football nut" by manager Dean Smith, the £110k-per-week machine has scored ten goals and supplied nine assists from 29 outings in the Premier League this term, retaining his cutting edge despite being mired in lower-table obscurity all year.
As per FBref, the mercurial "monster" – as dubbed by journalist Josh Bunting – ranks among the top 19% of attacking midfielders and wingers across Europe's top five leagues over the past year for rate of non-penalty goals, the top 12% for rate of assists, the top 10% for shot-creating actions, the top 12% for progressive passes and the top 19% for rate of tackles per 90.
Essentially, this underscores the ace's prolific brilliance, maintained and oiled to the brim in the face of adversity and unquestionably capable of providing Howe's Toon with a dimension unseen within the current flourishing crop.
He could be Newcastle's own version of Paulo Dybala, with the respective phenoms certainly bearing a semblance in the way they ply their trade on the grass.
The Argentine World Cup winner also has an eye for the goal, wreaking havoc on opposing back-lines with a multitude of ways to send his supporters into rapture, ranking among the top 13% of positional peers for rate of non-penalty goals, the top 23% for rate of assists and the top 5% for shot-creating actions per 90.
Scoring 16 goals and serving eight assists since joining Jose Mourinho's Roma last year, the 29-year-old's playmaking presence has helped guide the Serie A outfit to the Europa League final, where they await Sevilla.
Maddison would bring that similar extra layer to provide something new at St. James' Park, and Howe must swoop with force and throttle to ensnare one of English football's brightest gems.