Pep Clotet’s words have put on awful lot of pressure on Blue’s new signing – Opinion

I feel like he’s putting an awful lot of pressure on him.

After he made his debut on Saturday against Fulham, it will be interesting to see if he instantly goes into the first-team when we get back from the international break, or if he’s going to continue to be eased into things.

And Pep Clotet was quick to praise the new acquisition and spoke about what he’ll be able to offer going forward:

“He will be dangerous. He can play as he did on Saturday, wide, or he can come inside as a second striker, up front. He has that pace. Obviously I am very happy (he is with us) as he is one of the players who has everything to turn himself into a very important player for us.”

The fact that we brought him in during the season makes him feel like he’s this great messiah that’s going to come and solve all the problems, probably because it gets given a little bit of extra fanfare when it’s the only signing anyone in the country is making rather than being lost in the shuffle.

But also the fact that the club felt the need to get the deal done now rather than waiting until the January window to find someone else. It really feels like there is a lot of pressure on him to get us goals because we’ve basically been rushed into signing him, making it feel like we won some sort of race to bring him in.

So what happens if he doesn’t end up being all that and doesn’t deliver to a level that Clotet is predicting he will? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that he will, nor do I think that he will, his goal record from the past couple of years indicates that he knows where the goal is, and he could create a good ‘little and large’ partnership with Lukas Jutkiewicz.

But I’m just going to keep my expectations reasonable and wait to be impressed, rather than set them high and be set up to be disappointed.