Newcastle United fans finally got their first glimpse of Aladji Bamba in Saturday's 2-1 win over Valencia at the Mestalla. The 20-year-old started in midfield and looked neat and tidy on the ball, calm in possession, and always willing to try and break the lines with some long passes, even if they didn't all come off.
Bamba joined Newcastle for £35.5 million over two weeks ago, but the friendly matches against Gateshead and Bristol City, while Eddie Howe was still in charge, came too quickly for the 20-year-old to be involved. Instead, he has used the time to become acquainted with his Newcastle team-mates during their warm weather training camp in La Manga, and that culminated in him finally making his first appearance for the club in Spain.
Limited Experience but High Potential
Bamba arrived at Newcastle having only played 25 senior matches for Monaco, but he made such an impression in those games across Ligue 1, the Premier League, and the Champions League that Newcastle made their move. The Magpies feel they have signed one of the best young midfielders in Europe, and he has another chance to show it in Wednesday's friendly against Everton in Edinburgh.
But he has arrived in England as a relative unknown, and with that in mind, Chronicle Live spoke to French football expert Luke Entwistle, editor of Get French Football News, to get the inside track on United's new midfielder.
What Type of Player is Bamba?
"When I describe him, the word I always come back to is elegant. And that's exactly how I personally describe him as a player. He does look great on the ball, has great poise, has a good range of passing. That's probably his biggest strength."
"He covers spaces pretty well, can be caught out positionally still a little bit. I know we're kind of getting into strengths and weaknesses straight away. These are the standout attributes but there's such a limited data set, only 25 games."
"So it does feel like a risk from Newcastle's perspective to go for a player that does have so few minutes in the tank. But I suppose what they've been attracted by is the mixture of athletic and technical ability, which I suppose is quite rare. He is languid, he's tall, he's quite quick, even though maybe not the quickest."
"There are definitely quicker midfielders out there, but he's certainly not slow. But he also has that passing range in particular that really stands out. And I suppose that is what Newcastle are betting on, that he's got that mixture of attributes that they hope will make him a rare player in the market and will therefore have great value both whilst he's at the club. So that's the major hope, but also in terms of resale value as well."
Best Position: Six or Eight?
"In terms of his best position, it's still very early to say. He has played in such a variety of positions because of the managerial changes and just the incredible, pretty unprecedented injury crisis that Monaco had last season. The managers switched between back threes, back fours, midfield pivots, midfield three, single number six, two attacking midfielders, three attacking midfielders, one attacking midfielder, no attacking midfielder. He was just used in so many different configurations."
"I'm not saying he was in attacking midfield, but the autonomy that you have with those players and the relationships that you have with those players on the pitch do determine, obviously, how well you succeed in the roles that you play. And I think as a result of that factor, it was really hard to tell from those 25 games where he fit in best."
"I'd probably prefer him more as a number six, but it's hard to rule him out of being more of a relayer in that Newcastle midfield. It's a role he could also fulfil, but I feel as though he's a player who likes time on the ball. He likes to be able to turn, to pick out his pass. I mean, some of the best games I saw, the best game I particularly remember seeing, it kind of had a bit of everything that maybe shows why he could be a number six, also maybe why he couldn't be a number six."
"One of the midfielders that I had the most mixed feelings about since covering Monaco has been Sungutu Magata now at West Ham United. And he is a player who played the number six role, could also play in defence, but when he got the ball deep, you were just worried that he was going to lose it every time. He really didn't have much spacial awareness, knowing what was over his shoulder. And you saw that a little bit in Bamba."
"I think it was towards the end of the season, it might have even been the match against Lille, where every time he had received the ball facing his own goal, you just felt as though he was going to lose it. If he did turn and made a short pass, he wouldn't make the short pass. But he showed really good mental resilience."
"He really grew into the game and by the end of it, he was turning nicely, understanding where players were around him. There's a little bit less pressure on him as well, which probably helped in that regard. But then he was just playing these incredible Hollywood balls, 60 yards, cross-field balls, just creating so much space with them."
"And that kind of lends itself to being a number six, having that time and being able to ping those passes rather than a number eight, where it's going to be more congested and you may be needing to move quicker and shorter or carry with the dribble, for example."
"I think there are reasons to believe that he could be a good number six. Also reasons to believe that he could be more suited to a number eight, where the pressure when receiving the ball is not so great and the consequences of losing it are not so grave. He's still very young, he's so limited in terms of professional experience as well, so lots to work with and to mould."
Lack of Experience: Worry or Encouragement?
"I suppose it's more for coming into the first team, it happened amid an injury crisis and there was a bit of a domino effect especially at the start of the season."
"The straw that broke the camel's back was Eric Dier succumbing to injury which forced Denis Zakaria to move out of his usual midfield position and go play centre-back in Hutter's back three and that just provided the space then especially with Pogba not yet being up to speed and that just provided opportunities for him."
"I remember when I was speaking to Djimi Traore he spoke about how good a pre-season he'd had but also how he was a bit of a statistical outlier in terms of ball recoveries and in lots of different metrics with the group elite. He basically ranked either top one or at least top three for so many metrics especially when it came to out-of-possession metrics and that's why essentially he got the nod."
"He admitted that this is a club, Monaco, that looks a lot at data and what the numbers are telling them and then comparing those numbers to what the players in the first team are doing and as a result he was drafted up because his numbers kind of tracked in between Lamine Camara and Denis Zakaria and they quite liked what that gave them in the midfield."
Comparison to Paul Pogba
"I've spoken a lot about the similarities between Pogba and Bamba. It was a bit of an easy narrative to spin last season. It's one that I did speak about quite a bit because Pogba simply wasn't there and Bamba was. I think that's part of it."
"We all expected this languid, exciting player with excellent passing ability and range to come into the Monaco midfield and everyone thought that would be Pogba. It ended up being Bamba. Definitely, visually, there are some similarities."
"I think for that to extend, Bamba does need to bulk up a little bit. He's very gangly, very languid. It allows him to be very mobile on the pitch but maybe for the Premier League it's something that he can work on. That would also make him more similar to Pogba who very much had that mix, the passing, the strength, the speed, etc. But there are similarities there and he has said himself that he's inspired by him as well."
Will He Succeed in the Premier League?
"I think he definitely could be a success in the Premier League. I say this about every Ligue 1 player really, but the similarities statistically between Ligue 1 and the Premier League are the most similar of any of the top five leagues in terms of its physicality and the dynamics of it."
"So it's not like the Bundesliga, perhaps where there is a bedding in time. Players generally who make the step from Ligue 1 to the Premier League, all seem to fit in pretty quickly."
"It's just the risk element that is associated with buying a player for €40 million who has only played 25 professional games and who in that period, as I say, didn't set the world alight. He was good, promising, and everyone expected him to get more minutes."
"He wasn't going to be a starter really this season for Monaco. He was not touted as this is going to be your starter midfielder. The idea has been that Monaco would go with a midfield two again, which would be Zakaria and another, and it could have been Bamba. It could have been Kamara if he stays, even though that looks unlikely. It could have been Pat Cabral."
"There's expected to be some recruitment in that area as well. So this is not Newcastle poaching Monaco's best player or best midfielder, or even a player that was a starter. What they're buying is potential, and we'll just see if that potential is realised. But he may need a little bit of time as a result."
