Pre-season is always a time for optimism and to get carried away about the transfer speculation at your club (unless you are an Aston Villa fan) and I’m about to get very carried away about our wonderfully gifted new Frenchman, Dimitri Payet, after his fine debut against Southend at the weekend.
After watching the 1-0 win over Maltese minnows Birkirkara last Wednesday, I was concerned about the lack of creativity and goal threat in the side, even though I had to bear in mind that most of the lads had barely got 60 minutes under their belts previously in the pre-season.
Although I also knew that there were many players to come into the team as well such as Sakho, Obiang, Kouyate etc, the only one who is a real midfield creator is Dimitri Payet now that Downing has left the club and that worried me as you never really know if a new player from abroad is going to hit the ground running do you?
We’ve seen it many times in the past with the likes of Erik Lamela; a complete and utter failure at Spurs, despite clearly having a lot of class and we all remember Veron at Manchester United and Chelsea don’t we? I mean, what the hell happened there?
At Roots Hall, Payet showed us that he had two great feet, a fantastic touch and composure on the ball, the ability to beat a man, pinpoint crossing ability and the killer ball in the final third of the pitch. His two goals were superbly taken, including a delicious free-kick and he even had time for an assist as well. There could have been more and I hope he is saving it for the big time.
Yeah, I know it was only Southend in the middle of a gorgeous summer and as the saying goes ‘but can he do it on a cold, wet night up in Stoke?’ but when was the last time we saw a footballer with this kind of class playing for us, getting bums off seats?
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Ravel Morrison certainly was one and it was heart-breaking to see it not work out with him but overall it has been a long time since we had a player who was capable of producing the unexpected and make you feel that we can cause problems against the very best.
I would say that we would have to go as far back as 2006/07 with one Carlos Tevez and Yossi Benayoun. That’s nine years and far too long for this club to have been starved of such creativity and footballing talent.
I’m really hoping that our new manager Slaven Bilic can find a system where Payet is given a free reign to pop up in all sorts of areas on the pitch when we are attacking and not be restricted to just playing on the wing. He is far too good for this team currently to be used as a winger only. There may be times when he will need to do a job but overall I think he needs to be unleashed in a free attacking role.
Diafra Sakho will be the most beneficial from Payet’s creativity, such are his natural poacher instincts. Let’s hope that his back problems are behind him now and he can have an injury free season because I really believe he could get close to 15 league goals this time around.
Seeing Payet perform like that really is a relief after the departure of Stewart Downing to Middlesbrough last week, which I saw as a big blow. Although Payet is a step up in class from our former man, people forget how superb Downing was in the first half of last season and with this forthcoming season being such an important one, I felt we needed to keep him. There could be a lot of games to play and the burden of creating and scoring goals needs to be shared.
The new signings so far have all been mightily impressive and I’m sure there are a couple more to come but I truly hope one of them is another creative midfield type because if (touchwood) something happens to Payet, then there could be a few more frustrating days/nights like the Birkirkara game. It’s all looking very positive right now though.
