Plymouth yet to receive any Tolaj bids - Cleverley
Lorent Tolaj's goal against AFC Wimbledon was his 21st of the season - 20 coming for Plymouth Argyle [Shutterstock] Plymouth Argyle manager Tom Cleverley says he has had no bids for top scorer Lorent Tolaj. The 24-year-old Swiss striker has scored 20 goals in 32 appearances since joining from Port Vale in August. He has been linked with a move away from the club, with Championship sides reportedly interested in him as well as Scottish club Celtic.
It led to Cleverley saying a club would "have to pay a lot of money" for Tolaj after his side's 3-1 win at AFC Wimbledon, where he scored Argyle's second goal. Tolaj has scored in his past three appearances after returning from injury at the start of the month. "Neither mine or [director of football] Derek Adams' phone has received any calls," Cleverley told BBC Radio Devon.
"But I'd imagine agents are doing their thing in the background. "Tolly hasn't expressed anything about wanting to leave the football club and I think you can see by his work-rate and competitive spirit more than anything, before you talk about the goals, how much he loves playing for Argyle. "Obviously, he's one of our best players, he will attract some interest and inquiries.
"Every team in the country would love a striker that can turn a draw into a win in the blink of an eye and those do cost a lot of money. " Lorent Tolaj is just the second player in the past decade to score 20 or more goals for Plymouth Argyle in a single season - the last player to do it was Morgan Whittaker in the 2023-24 campaign [Shutterstock] Tolaj missed out on the League One team of the season at Sunday's English Football League (EFL) awards, with Leyton Orient's Dom Ballard and Stockport County's Kyle Wootton being selected. But Cleverley feels that had Tolaj not missed a large amount of football between the start of December and this month he would have been included.
Tolaj's red card against Northampton meant he missed Argyle's first three league games in December before he sat out 11 games between mid-January and the start of this month after a number of injuries. "There's a lot of respect to Kyle Wootton and Dom Ballard of what they've done this season, and exceptional seasons and great strikers," he said. "But I think the suspension against Northampton knocked him a little bit off track, and then I think he missed maybe 10 games with small injuries either side of the Cardiff game.