Bienvenue à Toon Yoan Gouffran! (second left).Hello and welcome to the first in my series where I shall be probing the latest batch of French fancies picked up on Graham Carr’s Eurostar shopping trips to Lille.
I will be looking at the latest four signings in no particular order, who were Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, Yoan Gouffran, Massadio Haïdara and Moussa Sissoko. There was of course a fifth who came before them, Mathieu Debuchy, but the pursuit of him went on for so long that I have already written several pieces about him, including this one where I looked at Debuchy in comparison with Newcastle United’s existing first choice right back, Danny Simpson, when Debuchy was still a Lille player. Hence, I will leave him on the backburner for now.
So without further ado I will move on to the first of our French foursome, Yoan Gouffran, purchased from our Group D Europa League opponents, Girondins de Bordeaux for a highly cut price fee of €2.5 million, which converts to around £2.1 million at current exchange rates. This was because Gouffran’s contract at Bordeaux was due to expire in the Summer anyway and he was already free to reach a pre contract agreement with another club which could have seen him leave Bordeaux for nothing in the Summer. Let’s start by getting his statistics out the way!
“‘Phenomenal’ was all a breathless Fred Rutten (Vitesse Arnhem’s manager) could say. A word so rarely uttered in the Eredivisie it took many by surprise. Phenomenal you say? In truth no other superlative could do justice to the display of incredible forward play he had the pleasure of witnessing from one of European footballs most in form strikers. Wilfried Bony.”
Vitesse Arnhem’s 24 year old muscled magician, Wilfried “Daddy Cool” Bony is currently the Eredivisie’s highest scorer and with very good reason. Cheick Tiote’s Ivory Coast team mate is now seen as a natural successor to Didier Drogba with his great strength, dynamism, hold-up play, aerial threat, great finishing abilty and importantly, superb techinique on the ball – He also has a good injury history too. (more…)
