Emi Buendia

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Humble pie here too, I was a big fan pre injury but thought he was a busted flush after last season.

On top of the goals, he has recently become less wasteful in possession (one or two small transgressions today notwithstanding). Where earlier in the season, our play seemed to frequently break up at his feet (too often looking for the threaded pass, and at other times just plain mistakes), he seems to have cut out a good portion of the errors and his judgement in forward passing is better.

It’s a great redemption story.

You make him sound like Morgan Rogers with all those incomplete passes, mistakes, etc.

The big difference and the one that he was constantly accused of was being too lightweight and so easily pushed off the ball. That seems to have disappeared and it reminded me of an interview with Vitinha at PSG, who at 64kg had a very similar problem. He never had the physicality to compete so had to use other attributes of his game to compensate.

[villadelph]

Second best goal involvement ratio per 90 mins this season behind Haaland.

[dcdavecollett]

Apart from all the other stuff, what I like about the new Emi is that he no longer sits on the floor waving his arms and demanding free-kicks when he gets clobbered. He now gets up and closes down the man with the ball.