Alejandro Garnacho is playing his FIFTH season now in the Premier League, at the age of 21.
Granted, he is still very much a young and developing player. However, he isn’t some youngster who has just broken into senior football with not many games under his belt. He’s actually come in with fairly good Premier League experience and also in Europe.
However, when I make a point of experience, I want to see QUALITY and elite experience. Yes, I know this is no longer the Chelsea way, and these players cost money and want big wages. But this is why our priorities need to change. Will they? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean we cannot keep asking for changes. Just because a player has played five seasons in the Premier League, especially at the age of 21, it doesn’t mean he is coming in as a proven player.
Experience is so much more than just appearances. It’s so much more than just age. You have to pick the right experience.
But my point in this article isn’t even about experience, it’s more about how signing Garnacho was just signing more inconsistency and adding that to an already raw and inconsistent squad.
I don’t think he’s a bad player at all. He is direct, he will often just look to go forward rather than always pass backwards, recycle, or just break down an attack by over-playing. He has a lot of strengths. But he’s still raw and still inconsistent, and surely we all saw that when he was at Manchester United? I certainly did, which is why I had doubts about splashing £50m on him.
Can he get better and become very good for us? Maybe. You can’t write that off, and I’ll give him every chance to get there. But I’ll always just call things as I see them, and Garnacho has never been a player I’ve looked at and thought, ‘wow, I’d love to see him at Chelsea’, and he’s never really moved me much.
As I say, he can be decent. He scored two very good goals against Cardiff in the week, but then he drops a shocker at the weekend. He’s just too inconsistent and that for me isn’t even a debate.
The Football Fancast wrote after the Newcastle game:
‘When it really comes down to it, the most frustrating and disappointing performance of the lot from a Blues perspective came from Alejandro Garnacho.
‘The former Manchester United star was fully deserving of his start following his brace against Cardiff City in the League Cup, but he looked nowhere near as dangerous against the Toon.
‘Football.london’s Bobby Vincent was also unimpressed with the Argentine, awarding him a 4/10 match rating at full-time.
‘That might sound harsh, but the winger’s statistics more than justify the appraisal.
‘In his 95 minutes of action, he took five shots, but just one was on target, took 52 touches but lost the ball 16 times, lost 50% of his duels, failed in 100% of his crosses and produced an expected assists figure of just 0.07..
‘Ultimately, it was a really poor performance from Garnacho and one that should probably see him removed from the lineup for Chelsea’s next game.’
The trouble is, his ‘backup’ is Jamie Gittens, who for me has been even worse than Garnacho! Which again, raises the recruitment concerns we have regularly been seeing.
I want to sign this off once again by saying that I am not writing any player off. I WANT them to prove me wrong and will give them every chance to. I will just always call things as I see them, whether praise or criticism. As a fan, we have a right to do this. I’m not slating any player here, I’m just saying it as it is. Garnacho has a lot of positives too, but unfortunately his negatives are making him far too inconsistent and raising too many question marks.