Powerful frontman has attracted attention from various clubs, but is he any good?
When this story first appeared, I won't have been alone in taking one look at the £12million price being mentioned and thinking "Ha! No way Huw will pay that!". Despite the extra cash in the club's coffers, and the pressure applied by other teams interested in the Frenchman's signature, it seems that true to form the Swans are unwilling to break the bank to get their man and that £8million may be nearer the mark.
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| Gomis in action for France against Brazil |
At first glance, that figure is still a lot of money for a player who's 27 (28 in August) and has never scored in excess of 16 league goals in one season, but there's more going on here than meets the eye. I can't claim to be any kind of authority on Gomis or French football, however you don't have to be to spot a developing trend in the burly centre-forward's track record. As pointed out in this excellent article by Whoscored last year (also the source of the statistics I use for this blog), Gomis improves year on year and that, for me, is a very encouraging trait to have as a centre-forward. How many times have you seen a young striker go off the boil and fail to recapture the spark of youth? Not so in this case; he's clearly someone whose understanding of his role is growing and there's no reason to doubt that he'll continue to improve as time goes on.
After coming through the ranks at St-Etienne, Gomis netted twice in his first 19 games for Les Verts before a loan spell at Troyes (where he scored 6 goals in 13 games) helped force him into the first-team reckoning, and from that point there's been no turning back for the man dubbed "Baby Drogba". He found himself thrust into the fold, and despite only scoring twice in his first full season his coaches could see there was more to come. Over the next 3 seasons he's score 36 goals in 101 games, attracting attention from, amongst others, Newcastle United (then managed by Kevin Keegan), however it was Lyon who ultimately won out, securing his signature in a 13million Euro move. It's worth noting that around the time of that transfer Gomis stated that he'd be open to a move to "England" but that Serie A was his preferred choice.
As mentioned above, there's some historical data to go off (so we can compare year on year) but how did he fare this season? 18 in 42 (in all competitions) is pretty good, but when you consider 9 of those appearances were off the bench then all of a sudden it looks a little more impressive. As there's a disparity between league and Europa League stats (which is worth looking at) all stats from this point will be league only unless otherwise mentioned.
In 37 league appearances (9 off the bench), he managed 16 goals and 4 assists - both figures which are equal to his previous best returns, and averages 2.8 shots per game. He also wins one aerial duel per game (significantly lower than Michu's 3.3, however Gomis wins 2 per game in Europe so maybe it's a French league thing), which is surprisingly low for such a big, supposedly physically imposing player. He's caught offside 1.7 times per game, which would indicate that unlike any current Swansea striker he plays on the defender's shoulder, while he plays 0.7 dribbles per game and tries to play a "key pass" with the same frequency.
More worryingly, he's dispossessed 1.9 times a game and loses the ball through poor control/a mistake 2.4 times. These stats would stick out a mile when compared with the attacking half of the Swansea team, but stats aren't everything - and most certainly don't win you games. Goals win you games and you can't say that Gomis doesn't know where the net is, that's for sure. A pass success rate of around 75% needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as on average he only played 19.1 passes per game - as stated in a recent blog any player who joins the Swans can expect to see their passing percentages increase and I think this would be very true here, as with figures like that he's clearly not getting a lot of easy ball in to feet.
As I mentioned earlier, there's a bit of a disparity between the stats from the league, and those from the Europa League. For example, in terms of shots per game it almost doubles from 2.8 to 4.6, and he won double the amount of aerial duels (2 as opposed to 1) per game, but the fact that he only played 5 European games this year means that these stats aren't necessarily a fair reflection of his season as a whole.
As you can see from the table above, there's been a steady improvement for a while - even if in terms of passing and ball retention he went backwards slightly this season. To be honest, if it means you'll score an extra four goals a year I'd quite happily let a few passes go astray, and with Gomis coming into what are traditionally regarded as a striker's "prime years" you'd have to hope he, at the very least, maintains his current level of performance. He'll be hoping so too, as he aims to add to his tally of 10 international caps (three goals), but to me it appears his best years could well be ahead of him.
£8million? That would be at the top end of what I'd hope the Swans would consider spending on one player, but ultimately they're massively more qualified to make that kind of decision than I am. If they think he's worth it, then they've got my backing 100% - I'm just glad that £12million figure seems to have disappeared. Oh, and it does seem that Cardiff are interested in signing him too. Not a bad way to start the summer that; getting one over on your arch-rivals...