Opinion: Viv Is Key This Season

The Nigerian born winger, Viv Solomon-Otabor has become a familiar name to most bluenoses due to his glimpses in the first team squad. Despite costing a fortune to have his name put on the back of your shirt, he is a fan favourite as it’s always good to see academy graduates come up and do well for the first team.

Now, I am quite surprised that he has not made the breakthrough into the first team as I believe he is actually a better version of Gray who as we all know, is now a Premier League Champion. What Viv has which Demarai didn’t was actually his no fear attitude. If the other winger has the ball out wide, then Viv or Gray would be expected to get into the box and try and get a header onto the ball. Viv does this and it means that the other centre back is occupied so that Donaldson virtually has a free header. It is a simple tactic to flood the box. Gray didn’t seem to want to head the ball and therefore often didn’t get into the box or hung on the edge which despite being an effective tactic sometimes, it was quite selfish.

So personally, I think that he should be in the first team starting 11, not just starting on the bench. This is because of his raw ability. He used to often lack that final ball that is essential for wingers to get right and I think this was due to the lack of fitness he had by playing at the level of the reserves. However, more recently he appears to have bulked up and really worked on his cardio because he is sprinting to get onto the ball and then his final delivery doesn’t look tired like it used to in the past. Due to this, he has become a more complete player. The thing I’d like to see him improve is his ability to score. He needs to focus on accuracy rather than power but that will come with time and experience.

The 20 year old would also feature in my plans as quite frankly, we haven’t got many options. Cotterill has come back from the Euro’s looking like he is off form for whatever reason and Stewart doesn’t seem match ready and I think Viv is better than him anyway. Which just leaves the goal machine that is Maghoma. We need two wingers and rather than shoving someone unfamiliar out wide, I think that we should play Viv. He is close to being our best winger and he will never have experience unless we give it to him.