OPINION Onuachu faces historic battle to succeed in the PL

In order to transfer his goal scoring to the Premier League, the Nigeria international striker will need to overcome the weight of history.

In one of the most overdue transfers in modern footballing history, Paul Onuachu finally got a move to the big time.

No disrespect to the Belgian top-flight, but the Nigeria international has looked ripe for the plucking for at least two years now. Over the last 42 months, Onuachu has scored 85 goals in 134 appearances in all competitions for Genk, a staggering return that made his continued stay in the Jupiler Pro League difficult to parse.

The 28-year-old has had nothing handed to him. His gangly, awkward, unglamorous style may not be to everyone’s tastes, but he has earned a shot at the Premier League by simply refusing to be ignored. While he has not hidden his frustration at being overlooked in previous transfer windows, there has been no disrespect directed at Genk at any point. It means he leaves Belgium with the best of wishes from both fans and management, and that his feats of goal scoring will be fondly remembered.

The Smurfs faithful will also be keen to see how he does over on England’s south coast. Not for Onuachu, a soft landing; he is stepping into the breach for struggling Southampton at a time of no little peril. The prospect of relegation is all too real, and if the Saints are to keep their heads above water, in the absence of clean sheets, they will need to improve on their meagre 17-goal haul so far in this campaign. The rationale behind plumping for a striker with a 0.63 goals per game average is apparent.

However, beyond the precarity of Southampton’s current situation, there is reason to believe that Onuachu will find transferring his goal output to the Premier League complicated.

Now, this is no attempt at PL exceptionalism propaganda—there is more than enough of that floating around on Twitter. However, there is plenty of data to suggest that England’s top flight presents a more onerous challenge than most other leagues. While the ability of great players to adapt to its peculiarities is often underestimated, it is demonstrably faster, more physical and more intense than pretty much every other league in the world.

Onuachu is himself no shrinking violet. Standing at 6ft 7in, he comes in as the Premier League’s tallest footballer, and there is no doubt he will present a unique puzzle for many a centre-back in the division. That said, it is worth looking at the data to get an idea of how the 28-year-old might do in terms of making his bones in one of the world’s greatest leagues.

For this, I decided to see how other strikers of a similar age who made the same transition (Belgian top flight to a top seven European league) fared. I pulled up every striker who has made that move, then filtered them by time period (going back 15 years, to make it more manageable) and age (25 and above). I also made sure to only include players for whom the transfer represented their first time in one of Europe’s top seven leagues. Then, I graded the success of each transfer.

Right away, the results do not look very encouraging. Following the filtering, of the 13 results, only three of the transfers can be said to have been successful. 

Colombian Carlos Bacca is probably the biggest hit of the lot, excelling not only at Sevilla (with whom he won the Europa League) but also at AC Milan. Thomas Henry and Igor de Camargo can be considered moderate successes, especially within the context of the standings of the clubs they joined. The rest, however, certifiably underperformed.

Perhaps the most relevant – and concerning – parallel for Onuachu is former Genk teammate Mbwana Samatta, who signed on with Aston Villa in 2020 for four-and-a-half years after riding roughshod over the Jupiler Pro, but failed to make a meaningful contribution to the Villans. The Tanzania marksman was quietly let go eight months later, shipped out to Fenerbahce on an initial loan with a purchase obligation.

Clearly, football clubs are, more and more, favouring the signing of pre-prime footballers, especially with an eye on resale value and room for improvement. Still, it is uncanny how poorly peak age centre-forwards perform when making the transition from Belgium. What could be to blame?

It is difficult to answer with certainty, but it might not be unconnected to the fact that the Jupiler Pro League is really a developmental league. It is one where promising young talent is afforded a soft-ish landing and a platform to demonstrate potential, before being snapped up to continue education elsewhere. As such, it is of little benefit to stick around there too long; it might even, given the data, be actively detrimental. It’s a bit like how a three-year-old only being able to recite the multiplication table to six still suggests genius potential, but a 10-year-old only being able to do the same would be a point of concern. 

Of course, all this reveals is what has come before. That is useful for divining what might happen, but it is neither prophetic nor indicative of what will happen. Trends are there to be bucked, after all. Having waited this long for the opportunity, surely Onuachu will make a good fist of doing just that.

However, if he were to succeed, he would have defied the weight of history in doing so. 

• The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Pulse Sports

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