Jump to content
Newcastle-Online

Anthony Elanga

SUPERTOON

by SUPERTOON
in Football

 Share

Recommended Posts

MagSA

MagSA

Posted
Posted

He is just so incompatible with our way of playing. I thought and said that when we bought him and gave EH the benefit of the doubt, allowing time to assimilate but more than 4 month later he is still wholly incompatible with our style of play and I cannot see him building a relationship with Wally. They are complete contrasts. 

 

Would really love for him to succeed, not least because of the sizeable investment but I doubt that. Not even sure the return of Wissa up front might bring about better outcomes.

Link to post
Share on other sites
bobbydazzla

bobbydazzla

Posted
Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, MagSA said:

What then was the rationale for bringing him in, we were never going to play like Forest, unless there was a view that he could be moulded into a more versatile player?


The rationale was that the scouting team and coaches thought he’d be a good addition to our squad and had thought that for a while, so got him on board in the halcyon early summer days before Isak started acting like a cunt and we were forced into a major change of strikers.  
 

Anything else is just speculation from amateur keyboard scouts and tacticians. 

 

 

Edited by bobbydazzla

Link to post
Share on other sites
oldtype

oldtype

Posted
Posted

I just struggle to understand what happened with this guy. If he was some has-been superstar on the decline or foreigner who was struggling to adapt to the League I'd get it.

 

He's twenty-three years old, he should still be improving. And a simple change of tactics doesn't take you from 56 starts as one of the most effective right wingers in the Premier League, to whatever this is.

 

It's not as if the "very fast human being" archetype is some extremely uncommon player type that you have to create a bespoke tactical role for.

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
huss9

huss9

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, oldtype said:

I just struggle to understand what happened with this guy. If he was some has-been superstar on the decline or foreigner who was struggling to adapt to the League I'd get it.

 

He's twenty-three years old, he should still be improving. And a simple change of tactics doesn't take you from 56 starts as one of the most effective right wingers in the Premier League, to whatever this is.

 

It's not as if the "very fast human being" archetype is some extremely uncommon player type that you have to create a bespoke tactical role for.

 

 

we've not really seen him use his pace either.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Shak

Shak

Posted
Posted

We’ve had players start slowly under Eddie and come good before, I will say though that Elanga is probably the most concerned I’ve been about a struggling new player.

 

I think he’ll eventually settle down and become less jittery out there and understand what is expected of him tactically, he’s clearly got some tools in his locker and has shown he can be very effective at this level.

 

However, the major issue for me is that he was bought to play with a striker that we don’t have anymore. Think Eddie somewhat struck gold with a right footed RW last year, with Murphy excelling in feeding Isak the ball quickly. Elanga then was intended to be the evolution of that, with the added bonus of having a lot more pace and being able to take players on in a way Murphy never could.

 

With Isak gone, we need to evolve our style of play and I don’t see Elanga as a traditional wide man out on the right in a 4-3-3 being a good fit for it, especially as Eddie is trying to evolve us into more of a possession based team that doesn’t rely on intensity as much as we once did.
 

We are crying out for a ball playing left footed RW in that spot, someone who will get on it between the lines and give Bruno someone to bounce off of in the build up play. Almiron wasn’t exactly that but between him and Trippier we used to run most of our play through that side and it was a lot more effective than it is now.
 

I would also suggest that a big part of the reason Livramento often looks better at LB is because he has a right footed LW ahead of him, creating space to run into. On

the right he doesn’t have that and it limits him IMO.

 

Where does this leave Elanga, then?

 

A system change to a 4-4-1-1/4-2-3-1 would probably help him look better on the right, though some of the issues above would still exist. I just don’t know if I see Eddie moving away from the 4-3-3 though, being realistic.

 

If not, the other option is that we view Elanga as a left sided player going forward and sell Gordon or Barnes (or just cut your losses with Elanga) and use that money to buy someone else for the right side. I suspect that the stats here aren’t perfect but this is what transfermarkt has for Elanga in terms of his numbers by position played over his career.

 

IMG_0670.thumb.jpeg.c60d5ceff1b0a67019635821bb8488c0.jpeg

 

Even accounting for some inaccuracies in the data and taking into account likely issues with the level of opposition he was up against, he seems vastly more productive from the left. Feel like in our system he’d offer a lot of the same things Gordon does there, frankly.


Feels like something for next summer rather than anything we can realistically expect to address any time before then, but honestly binning the whole right footed RW thing would be my preference and I hope it’s the direction we go.

Link to post
Share on other sites
HayDen Traces

HayDen Traces

Posted
Posted
7 minutes ago, Shak said:

We’ve had players start slowly under Eddie and come good before, I will say though that Elanga is probably the most concerned I’ve been about a struggling new player.

 

I think he’ll eventually settle down and become less jittery out there and understand what is expected of him tactically, he’s clearly got some tools in his locker and has shown he can be very effective at this level.

 

However, the major issue for me is that he was bought to play with a striker that we don’t have anymore. Think Eddie somewhat struck gold with a right footed RW last year, with Murphy excelling in feeding Isak the ball quickly. Elanga then was intended to be the evolution of that, with the added bonus of having a lot more pace and being able to take players on in a way Murphy never could.

 

With Isak gone, we need to evolve our style of play and I don’t see Elanga as a traditional wide man out on the right in a 4-3-3 being a good fit for it, especially as Eddie is trying to evolve us into more of a possession based team that doesn’t rely on intensity as much as we once did.
 

We are crying out for a ball playing left footed RW in that spot, someone who will get on it between the lines and give Bruno someone to bounce off of in the build up play. Almiron wasn’t exactly that but between him and Trippier we used to run most of our play through that side and it was a lot more effective than it is now.
 

I would also suggest that a big part of the reason Livramento often looks better at LB is because he has a right footed LW ahead of him, creating space to run into. On

the right he doesn’t have that and it limits him IMO.

 

Where does this leave Elanga, then?

 

A system change to a 4-4-1-1/4-2-3-1 would probably help him look better on the right, though some of the issues above would still exist. I just don’t know if I see Eddie moving away from the 4-3-3 though, being realistic.

 

If not, the other option is that we view Elanga as a left sided player going forward and sell Gordon or Barnes (or just cut your losses with Elanga) and use that money to buy someone else for the right side. I suspect that the stats here aren’t perfect but this is what transfermarkt has for Elanga in terms of his numbers by position played over his career.

 

IMG_0670.thumb.jpeg.c60d5ceff1b0a67019635821bb8488c0.jpeg

 

Even accounting for some inaccuracies in the data and taking into account likely issues with the level of opposition he was up against, he seems vastly more productive from the left. Feel like in our system he’d offer a lot of the same things Gordon does there, frankly.


Feels like something for next summer rather than anything we can realistically expect to address any time before then, but honestly binning the whole right footed RW thing would be my preference and I hope it’s the direction we go.

Just throwing it out there, would Elanga benefit from an out and out #9? 

I think all of our wide men are struggling this season with big Nick up front and his lack of pace/movement?

It will be interesting to see whether playing with Wissa for half a season improves him statistically...

Link to post
Share on other sites
Shak

Shak

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 30/12/2025 at 13:54, HayDen Traces said:

Just throwing it out there, would Elanga benefit from an out and out #9? 

I think all of our wide men are struggling this season with big Nick up front and his lack of pace/movement?

It will be interesting to see whether playing with Wissa for half a season improves him statistically...


We’re definitely having issues across the team adjusting to a very different type of CF in Woltemade than we had in Isak.

 

That said, I don’t think much could have saved Elanga the last few months. Hopefully it settles down for him because we can’t afford to just write him off as a bad buy, need him to become a functional member of the squad.

 

 

Edited by Shak

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...