Malcolm Macdonald has been mightily impressed with the way Newcastle United player Ayoze Perez has performed lately.
The 25-year-old netted a hat-trick for the Magpies when they took on Southampton last weekend in a 3-1 win, and Macdonald has drooled over the subtlety that Perez has brought to his game this season.
He says that the reason why Perez does not score around 30 goals a season is that he prefers to score sublime goals rather than ugly ones.
“I’ve always thought he is such an elegant player, has so much subtlety, so many deft touches and flicks, that he’s a joy to behold. Now he’s added goalscoring to his repertoire,” he said in his Chronicle column.
“The Spaniard scores beautiful goals not scruffy ones. That’s why he does well reaching 10 for the season and doesn’t get closer to 30. You have to score all sorts to lift the roof.
“For some reason the fans have been reluctant to take to a player who was only just into his twenties when he joined. A babe in arms. He’s learned and improved and at 25 will get even better. A lot thought that when Miguel Almiron arrived Perez would be the one to go out of the team but Perez has actually blossomed playing alongside Almiron.”
OPINION
At the start of the season, Perez was definitely a player who was down in the dumps at Newcastle. Nothing seemed to go his way, luck was never on his side, and soon, the fans started to take it out on him. You could hardly blame them – he was woeful and out of sorts for a very long time, so it was no surprise that he was getting criticism left, right and centre. Many fans would have thought that the arrival of Almiron would have ousted Perez from the team, just as Macdonald pointed out, but it seems to have had the complete opposite effect. In fact, his arrival has meant that Perez has been in the best form that he has been in for a very long while, and this is just the thing that the fans have been waiting for. However, this recent improvement may mean that some clubs will come in for him this summer.