Ken Hairy 3,772 Posted March 3, 2021 As much as I loved Wes, he was never in the same stratosphere as Emi is. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
chicken 2,624 Posted March 3, 2021 3 minutes ago, Peanuts said: The big difference this season is that Buendia really feels like a matchwinner in the same way as Maddison or Grealish. My complaint about him last season was for someone with such good stats he didn’t do enough to affect the result. That’s all changed this season as he’s not only added more goals to his game but he seems to have more influence on games than before. I don’t know if we can keep him if we fo up but I’d like to think that a factor will be if we can show him (and Aarons and others) that we can match their ambition by investing properly to make a serious attempt at staying up this time. It's actually been a bit of a funny season for Buendia. He missed the start of the season with injury (I think) and then was dropped from matchday squads for exactly the same reason as Cantwell. The one key thing for me that has improved is his work rate. He is delivering much more consistently. Ever since around, I want to say, Nov/Dec time, something changed. It was like a message had finally gotten through to him and we saw less of the sitting on the ground slapping his hands down or having a bit of a strop and not tracking back because someone chose a pass not to him. He seemed to suddenly mature. I don't care much for stats, people become over reliant upon them without context. Like the whole "we only won 'x' number of games with Buendia not in the team". It ignores what else is going on. Like last season. We lost way more games than we lost. He was part of those games too and certainly didn't help us to win them. What he is giving us now is a much better level of commitment in games. He is reliably tracking back. His ball retention is much better - a huge criticism of him last season. I think this is highlighted by the sort of lull he has had recently and been a bit outshone by others like Cantwell, and yet whilst not being as dominant has still ticked along nicely and come up with assists. And he has scored 10 goals for the first time in a league season. We are starting to see the player we all saw he had the potential to be, long may it continue. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cambridgeshire canary 6,716 Posted March 3, 2021 15 minutes ago, Ken Hairy said: As much as I loved Wes, he was never in the same stratosphere as Emi is. Agreed. Wes will always be an icon but fair to say Emi has him just about beat when it comes to talent. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
