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Oh Jota night

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Surely Ki-Jana was a make-weight in the deal? Only way I could see that being part of the deal.
 
Surely Ki-Jana was a make-weight in the deal? Only way I could see that being part of the deal.
I think in practice you’re right, it’s just that clubs try not to do that anymore (FFP means you treat them separately so you can bank the full income immediately and amortise the purchase)
 
We missed a trick by not pushing this through and making it a double announcement video.
 
Surely this spells then end of one of Shaq/Origi?

He's a very good player. And at 23, this is a similar to age to when we signed Mane.

He's not terrifyingly fast like Sarr, but just a better, more productive player. You'd also say he's still quick, like Andy Robertson type quick. Very sharp over 20m.

He's 2 footed (like Mane), and make goals and assists. How many has Sarr got in his career?

My big problem with Sarr is that he appears to be a kick and run merchant, and has shown little ability on the ball. Apart from one good game against us, I was never really struck by his ability. He's very, very, raw still.

A player like Jota is a more accomplished footballer and can play CF (similar profile to Salah/Mane); so I think he'd suit our style better.
 
Yeah, Jota is quick, two-footed, works hard, can play across the front 3, scores goals in the prem. Supplements our attack well. I'm happy with this.
 
Being a Liverpool fan is like having a memory of a goldfish.

We went from creaming ourselves for Thiago to fuming over Ki Jana Hoever'a departure to creaming ourselves again over Jota in the last 15 minutes.
 
Looking at his numbers since joining Wolves -

131 appearances
63 Goals and Assists

In Europe Alone..

14 appearances
14 Goals and Assists

Not bad numbers tbf..
 
https://statsbomb.com/2020/09/wolverhampton-wanderers-season-preview-2020-21/

[article]
Part of the Wolves oeuvre is ball carrying at pace. It's not just Traoré either. Some experimental numbers I generated for speed with directness of ball carrying saw Diogo Jota rank fastest in the league, with Raúl Jiménez ranking fairly high too. Ironically, Traoré ranked a way back for this specific measure, which was likely a function of his tendency to stand up to the defender and essentially stalling before moving, but he ranked top in the league for average distance per carry into or inside the final third, with Jota third. Wolves as a whole attempt more actual dribbles (~take-ons) than any other team in the league, and carry the ball for longer distances everywhere high up the pitch right up into the box. This is a team that relies strongly on attackers that can transition through zones with the ball at their feet, as we can see when we look at longer carries for those three players:

jota-carries.png

[/article]
 
Looking at his numbers since joining Wolves -

131 appearances
63 Goals and Assists

In Europe Alone..

14 appearances
14 Goals and Assists

Not bad numbers tbf..
Post up Sarr's numbers if you have it.

I'm guessing he's a 1 in 5 player?

If we sign Jota, it makes perfect sense on so many levels. Michael Edwards and the committee are genuinely killing it.


1) He's not an out and out winger like Sarr, so we're not changing our style.
2) He predominantly plays on the left, meaning we have the option of him covering Mane, or Salah (moving Mane to the right again).
3) Can play CF
4) He scores goals and has a good assist record
5) The right age (before he explodes)
6) Two footed
7) Technical pacey player who knows how to strike a ball from all ranges
8) Speaks very good english unlike Sarr
9) Mature player
10) Used to being rotated in Nuno's set up
11) Can genuinely come in now and challenge the front three.
12) No Afcon worries
 
https://www.fourfourtwo.com/feature...ito-santo-tottenham-spurs-goal-premier-league
[article]On Sunday, Wolves beat Tottenham in North London. It was no new landmark, because they beat a far better Spurs side last season at Wembley, and by a wider margin. It was notable for two moments, though. The first was Jota’s goal which, with its clever run and back-post finish, was strangely similar to the first he ever scored for the club, against Hull City in the Championship, all the way back in August 2017.

The second was the run which led to Raul Jimenez’s winning goal. What a brilliant bit of play. There’s no metric which measures the impact of a run and pass like that but, at best estimate, Jota took six Tottenham players out of the game within seconds.

(Jota's goal at 0:58, 1:25)


Startling as it was, it was still typical. What’s interesting about Jota is that he doesn’t have any clearly outstanding attributes. He isn’t unusually quick, he doesn’t have an array of skill, and he isn’t physically overwhelming. And yet he's often effective by producing moments which do seem to depend on rare abilities.

That’s what creates this perception of him as a player without proper designation. Instead of performing a specific function within games, he just seems to find a way to be useful or decisive. The trite analogy is to say that he flows into the defensive cracks. But a more detailed appreciation would reference the way he works with Jimenez - who himself isn't appreciated nearly enough as a pivot - and how he moves into the space and positions that the Mexican’s runs and distribution make available. There's a really satisfying symmetry between those two. It's one of those co-dependencies that eventually someone smart will write a mini-thesis about.

Until then, it's worth also dwelling on what a fine job Nuno Espirito Santo has done individually with Jota.

Most players need refinement. Some of them have very obvious strengths that leave little ambiguity over how they should be used. Adama Traore is such an example. Impressive as his evolution has been, this was always what his very best was likely to look like.

Others, like Jota, require more interpretation. His optimal solution was never so obvious. In fact, there is no one answer to that question. His ability is more nebulous and tends to manifest in different ways depending on the opponent. As a result, the impression is of someone most effective when he's being used to explore a team's weakness. A player who can really just serve as an extension of his manager's acumen.

The game which springs immediately to mind is the 4-3 over Leicester City last season. It was his signature Premier League performance. Because of the hat-trick he scored, obviously, but also in the way that he was used. It encapsulated his worth perfectly. Claude Puel’s defence and midfield were in disarray at that time, and were struggling to cope with teams who transitioned quickly up the pitch. Added to which, the channels between their central defenders and full-backs were continually vulnerable.



It was a problem which Wolves targeted with Jota. The goals he scored were, collectively, the pay-off for attacking those issues and the dynamic was of a resource being used to maximum effect.[/article]
[article]

Just as it was back in April 2019, the night that Wolves dismantled Arsenal. Jota was not at the vanguard of the hosts’ assault, but his raiding presence unsettled a visiting side who had set up to dominate possession, and to play slowly and with control. Jota disrupted that. Just before half-time he got his reward, slaloming through Arsenal's limp tackles to score and put the game beyond doubt.

It was a pathetic goal to concede, but it still represented an alignment of Wolves’ great strength with Arsenal’s clearest weakness. It was Santo’s most thrusting, vertical player of the time, against Unai Emery’s mess of a midfield and his paceless defence.



For Arsenal that evening, see Tottenham last Sunday. Jose Mourinho’s team can’t defend. They have a terminal inability to track runners from midfield and, again, Jota was a big part of creating Wolves’ forward momentum from seemingly neutral situations. The Jimenez goal was the clearest demonstration of that, but it wasn’t the only emblem of his effect.

Often his signatures are more subtle. The goal he scored against Chelsea last season, for instance, depended on him taking advantage of Cesar Azpilicueta briefly turning away from the play to tie his shoe laces. It wasn't the Spaniard's finest Premier League moment, but Jota recognised the opportunity so quickly, waving frantically for a pass as soon as the ball had been snaffled by the Wolves press, that Chelsea's defence never had time to recover. He snuck in at the back-post to steer in that game's winning goal. It was simple, but it was ever so smart.


He is a streaky player, that shouldn’t go unsaid. Prior to the home leg of the Europa League tie against Espanyol, he’d scored five times this season, with all of those goals coming in a four-day block in early December. Since Espanyol, he’s scored six in three games. Without question, his tangible contribution is form dependent, and tends to come in fits and starts.

But what a fascinating footballer. In his range, in his uses, in these individual moments. He's not extravagantly gifted, nor is he blessed with any obvious physical advantages. Nevertheless, he manages to be woven tightly into the fabric of this Wolves team, while at the same time being arguably the most watchable part of it.

It's a relationship in perfect harmony. From being a suspected marriage of convenience, it's now difficult to imagine Wolves and Diogo Jota being apart. It's also telling that were they ever to be so, neither would be quite the same again.[/article]
 
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To be honest, I wish we could sign Jota and Jiminez. It would really complete our front line. Keep the front three obviously. Sell every other forward in the squad, AOC included.
 
Is my memory playing tricks on me (also could be entirely my imagination!) or doesn’t Jota also look very effective coming off the bench too? Like he’s one of those players that comes on an makes an impact rather than looking pissed off he wasn’t in the staring XI and struggles to get up to the speed of the game
 
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