Well I'd still say 23 is young, so I'd class it in the young and hungry, with something to prove category. Pereyra who was a few years older and was bought from a Juventus title winning side, I believe and had got minutes in the Champions league final. He is what I'd say is a player who was bought in expecting to push the club further towards the goal of Europe, as was Gerry.
I think this looks like a decent enough signing. Small fee so isn't going to bankrupt the club and there is no chance he is worse than Gray, Deeney, Penaranda, Success or Perica. I'd be surprised if he is worse than Fletcher too. Hopefully another striker signed plus a LW option and then we aren't looking too bad going forward.
Neither has anybody else but doesn't stop people writing him off! My favourite was the post that said people were creaming themselves on Twitter despite having never seen him play but then went on to say he will be ***** despite having never seen him play.
Very well aware I could be being whooshed here, but just in case - never made a senior appearance for them, moved straight from them to West Ham where he failed to score a single goal, and is about to turn 26 a couple of months into the season. Aside from the fact that being a Utd youth is not actually a guarantee of any particular 'potential', as we have seen from countless other youth team players of theirs, many of which aren't even in football anymore, but he doesn't even measure up well against plenty of other Utd youth team potentiallers who have gone on to utterly fail at the top level and disappear down the leagues despite being heralded as the next young thing, because they were being heralded as such whilst getting games and at times even scoring goals for the senior team. Not having done or shown something up to this point is not the guaranteed cast-iron be-all-and-end-all determinant of whether they ever will do, I'm well aware, but we can talk in terms of realism and probability. None of these aspects really add up to the idea that he has ever actually showed 'potential', aside from being picked up as a 13-year-old a decade and a half ago.
He probably can't wait. Personally I can't stand the Premier League and all the hype that goes with it but most footballers seem to want to play here. Carry on shitting over every signing though mate, whatever makes you happy.
Maybe he has been brought in as spare parts to keep the real strikers going. Until the announcement of Balotelli on a 4 year deal.
This guy isn't really a striker and I don't think we plan to play him there. He's a very cheap gamble to add to the squad who offers ridiculous pace across the front 3 and a handy option if things work out, if they don't, we'd be hard pushed to make a loss on him.
Let's face it, he's much better than Gray and from a financial aspect he's a fraction of the cost! Don't mind this deal BUT we need to be bringing in an out-and-out goalscorer this summer. Bin off Gray, Deeney, Perica, Success & Penaranda and go with JP, Dennis, Fletcher and one other (a first choice striker). He's worth the gamble at under £4m! He is young enough to still develop and improve and probably feels as if he's got a point to prove after a poor season last season?
I think I saw it on this thread somewhere, but couldn’t be bothered to go look. However, whoever said on here that he will now be playing alongside his countries captain, actually made a good point, and I agree with you. Ekong will know all about him, his ability, his attitude, his on and off the field problems, more than anyone. I’m sure Dennis desires to play for his country and what better way to prove yourself than alongside your countries captain. Hopefully he actually takes his opportunity and doesn’t follow in Success’ footsteps. This signing really does have all the makings to be the best piece of business this summer. Saying it again, this kid fires us to Prem safety.
Tell you what, I really hope this squad of 'point to proves' we're assembling don't end up proving their point. Where will their next dose of artificial motivation come from?
Cheers. ***** lol - 3 percentile for npxG. He looks just like the goalscoring striker we desperately need
Ssshhhh, we will have none of that here. Our fan base has already made their minds up that he’s crap, and a very poor signing.
Young men grow up at different times. Hopefully he's maturing and can become a massive player for us. Some people never grow up. If you're a young rich athlete who's immature, we call you petulant. If you're an older bloke on the internet you're called a troll and a ****. I've got more hope for a young man with a career in from of him than I do for some others who are much older, but who can't seem to handle the stark reality of their own mediocrity. Thankfully they have the internet. Hope he comes good, if not, we can loan him to Elbonia United FC or sell him to someone else. As long as he's not on massive wages (which I doubt), we should be fine. If we're truly adding more performance incentives and relegation clauses into deals, then he'll at least be financially motivated. p.s. I'd still like to see another pacy creative option added to the midfield mix. p.p.s. Proudly mediocre
Dennis only has 2 caps for Nigeria - both of them were 10 minute sub appearances at the end of 2019 (coming on vs Ukraine and Brazil). T-E started both those games, but I doubt he'd know a huge amount about him based on that. The main benefit of us having T-E with Dennis is that it might give him a bit of extra motivation to impress, and might help him settle in and settle down a bit. But if he impresses too much we could lose him for the Afcon.
Hahaha! This is amazing. A German colleague of mine who I respect on football matters having spent the last few conferences we were forced into discussing football and in particular our teams (instead of what we were meant to be discussing), Cologne and Watford also couldn't wait to get in touch. To echo what has been mentioned. His take is that he definitely has talent and they were surprised when they managed to get him. He seemed to try hard for about a week, played 6 games, 4 which were "incredibly bad" and two "less than average" with 0 goals. Still believes he could shine in the right team. He's been laughing at the Cologne twitter where the consensus seems to be "WTF" with a minority who think he'll go on to sell for big money. He also hints that scoring twice against Real could actual have been the worst thing to happen to him with his motivation and ego. I'm not against this transfer, I see why we have taken a punt BUT I'm sorry we still desperately need a striker. Hope those rumours are true.
I have it on very good authority that we've bid for one. No idea when the bid was placed (I know the bid was rejected as the selling club are holding out for the release clause which is a few million above our bid), but at least we were/are in the running for one.
West Brom Pereira? Good player but that is a big fee for us right now. Isn’t Olise supposed to be available for half that?
Well it all seems to have gone wrong for him since. I'm not totally against this signing, but right now, I'm edging towards pessimism, I know we can only really go for punts, but it does seem to go against what the head honchos seemed to say about attitudes
Yep. I can see us offering 10-12m for him though as he's definitely be worth that. Not that I would expect WBA to accept that amount, but it would fit with what Reids is suggesting.