According to The Athletic West Ham were reportedly in the hunt for Norwich’s creative lynchpin Emiliano Buendia before opting to splash £24million on Pablo Fornals this summer.
The two players profile very similarly and despite both team’s struggling to create goal-scoring chances on a regular basis, it’s Fornals who has failed to adapt to life in the Premier League with an average of just 0.6 key passes per game.
Buendia, likewise, is carving out more than 2.5 key passes and 3.6 dribbles per game, although this does come at the cost of retaining possession and leads to a high turnover of possession which Norwich have faltered under.
Buendia’s underlying numbers suggest an awful lot promise and whatever the future holds for the Canaries, Buendia will almost certainly be on the radar of many Premier League clubs.
He’s already racked up four Premier League assists – ranking him joint second behind Kevin De Bruyne.
Fornals, on the other hand, has found himself wilting under the pressure of expectation that came about following a productive U-21 European Championships with Spain in the summer.
Read West Ham’s verdict
The fact Fornals has played a part in every Premier League game this season is marred by the realisation that six of these ten appearances have come from the bench.
West Ham themselves are struggling to adopt an identity similar to the one that has propelled Leicester back into European contention, and this mismatch of ideologies is no place for a burgeoning creative talent to make a name for himself.
Thus, Fornals struggles whilst also personal to his conservative underlying numbers have their roots in Manuel Pellegrini’s inability to build a cohesive bridge between defence and attack.
It starves his most talented players of time and space to combine with each other in a settled and well defined tactical identity.
Buendia as the fulcrum of a well-drilled but ultimately naive Norwich team is at liberties to be more expressive on and off the ball in the knowledge that this is a central component of the side’s success last season.
It would thus be of a little surprise that were the pair to switch sides they would encounter the same issues and freedoms pinpointed in both team’s tactical setup.
