Barnsley have secured their first permanent signing ahead of 2020-2021 with the capture of Austrian midfielder Dominik Frieser.
The 26 year old has arrived from Austrian Bundesliga side LASK Linz – the same division Barnsley recruited head coach Gerhard Struber and centre back Michael Sollbauer from and becomes the fourth Austrian on the Reds playing staff alongside Sollbauer, Marcel Ritzmaier and Patrick Schmidt.
Frieser who is believed to have signed for a fee of around £1.3m has also featured for Struber and Sollbauer’s former club Wolfsberger and is a former team-mate there of Sollbauer but left before Struber took over.
He has made a total of 225 appearances across the Austrian divisions including 44 in 2019-2020, scoring 10 goals and also featuring in both legs of LASK’s Europa League Last 16 tie against Manchester United which they lost 7-1 whilst helping his side finish runners-up in their domestic competition, 10 points behind champions RB Salzburg, at whose stadium he scored twice at in a 3-2 LASK win in February – Salzburg’s only home league defeat in 2019-2020. (He would have become a title winner if it were not for LASK being deducted 12 points for breaching lockdown rules during the COVID-19 pandemic)
Frieser netted twice in the Europa League, in a 4-1 win over PSV Eindhoven and a 2-1 victory at Rosenborg and becomes the second overall recruit so far following the re-loan signing of Kilian Ludewig who of course comes from the aforementioned RB Salzburg.
The arrival of Frieser occurs on the same day that Jordan Green has joined League Two Southend on a six month loan. The 25 year old has struggled to break into the Reds side since joining from Yeovil in January 2019 with his last of 10 appearances coming in the 5-1 defeat at Preston in October. Ironically his only goal for the Reds came at Roots Hall, in a 3-0 win in March 2019.