Tuesday 4 April 2017

Is Afobe doing enough?

Benik may wonder at times why his name is still sung loudly by the fans when he has moments when he'd rather the ground swallowed him up. The AFCB fans are fair though and they want players to succeed. I kind of see affection for Afobe replacing what the fans had with Tokelo Rantie. In such analysis, it may not be the best future outlook for Benik.

Benik is struggling to make a regular impact on games.
What AFCB do like above all is a trier, and I just wonder if Benik's labouring style really gives the impression that he does give everything in games. It was notable to me in the game at Southampton that Benik wanted to get back to help the team and won a lot of good headers in AFCB's own box. That's the kind of work that will get him plenty of thanks from team-mates, but it's up the other end where AFCB are desperate for Benik to become a sharp shooter. At times I see him making progress and yet at St Marys it was two steps back again, with his second half chance that he looked well placed to score but which he slipped it the wrong side of the post.

Does Benik have that killer instinct to finish off moves? Is he hungry to be the best striker at AFCB? I would want to see more if I was Eddie Howe, as I saw more movement from Southampton's Rodriguez in making those diagonal runs off the centre-backs and early shots that troubled AFCB. Southampton's defenders had much less to do to guard against a static Afobe. It was only when runners like Fraser and Wilshere started to come from deeper that Southampton found it hard to stop the flow of AFCB in the second half.

I think Afobe needs to see himself as a generator of play as well as a goalscorer. He need sto try and look to get to the ball first and drive on and beat a player, rather than just waiting for other players to hopefully find him. He may be reliant in service like all forwards, but he could do more in my book to start the process as he may find that by giving and going he gets the ball back in positions that are ripe for scoring from. At the moment, he acts more like a scarecrow and scarecrows don't move very far.


The latest injury nes is that Andrew Surman may be out for the rest of the season with a knee-liaament injury.

1 comment:

  1. Have no idea why he has a song and others (cook and king) do not, benny is not good enough and will be yet another we make a large loss on!

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