The drop off in our win % without him his startling. The stats backing up what we know regards how key he is to us.
‘Top top player’ as Merse would say.
Yep really food to see this laid bare, I had been wondering what the difference was for a while given the facts associated with Unai's full seasons:
-Bouba available August-February in 2023-4: we are comfortably top 4 and even better than that until early January
-Bouba unavailable February to May in 2023-4: we splutter over the line with patchy results
-Bouba unavailable or unfit August to December 2024-5: we're inconsistent, mid table and struggle to manage games dominantly
-Bouba comes back January to May 2024-5: we go on a winning run and shoot up the table
There are of course other factors in all those fluctuations in form but he's a common denominator. The only period we've done well without him was in Unai's first half season when he missed a good chunk of our end of the season winning run. The much maligned Leander Dendoncker did a reasonable job of covering his loss then weirdly and we didn't concede much.
It seems people are starting to take notice of how good he is now, hence this article. I always tell fans of other teams that he is our best player, most of them barely know he exists. Cretins.