Villarreal transfer linked with yet another wide player

I seriously would have thought we were done signing wide attackers, yet we have been linked with the arrival of Brekalo from VFL Wolfsburg. For me, this doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think it’s particularly likely to happen and even if it is likely I don’t see the point. How many wide players do you add before a young player like Yeremi Pino gets frozen out? I’m just not here for it.

Just 23 years old, Brekalo made his first Bundesliga appearance with Wolfsburg back in 2016-2017. He has 27 appearances for the Croatian national team and posted 7 goals and 3 assists last season in the German top flight. He spent last year mostly as a left winger, which.. didn’t we just buy a left wing? But he played a lot of minutes as a central attacking midfielder in the 2019-2020 season.

smarterscout.com

You can see here his shot, pass, and dribble actions from a LW spot. He doesn’t hug the sideline as exclusively as someone like Danjuma, and is more likely to drop inside like Moi Gomez does. In which case... we already have Moi Gomez. Per smarterscout’s metrics his attacking output and defending quality were bang average, and scrolling through his other metrics on fbref I just am not blown away. He does produce a large number of live pass shot creating actions but then, so do a lot of people we already have for these roles.

I don’t know, I don’t want to seem like a downer on a player that may end up being here, but I really just do not see the point in this transfer at this time.