Taiwo Awoniyi’s adaptation to life in England has been impressive and the Forward has proven to be a good investment according to Lee Clarke of Nottingham Forest News.
Awoniyi left Union Berlin after a successful individual season where he scored 20 goals in 52 league appearances across two seasons.
His €20.5 million transfer to the Premier League club received mixed reactions, but Clarke insists the 26 year-old Nigerian was a well thought-out buy for Forest.
“Bringing Taiwo into that project that they had last season, I don’t think it was a risk in terms of his pedigree as a player,” the Managing Editor of Nottingham Forest News said during a session on BRL Podcast.
“If you look at the Bundesliga, it’s probably the second toughest league. To be honest, lots of fans of other divisions, sort of the Bundesliga, Liga, those sort of divisions, they’ll claim that that’s the toughest league. But the Premier League is the one that is kind of the most watched across the world and you do seem to get more competitive games in that league.
“So I don’t think it was a risk because the Bundesliga is still a tough league and he did score stacks of goals in that league.”
In the summer of the 2022-23 season, Taiwo Awoniyi sealed a five-year deal from Union Berlin to Forest, and closed his first league campaign with some impressive numbers.
With 17 goals in 27 PL appearances the Forward proved his doubters wrong and Clarke argues the Club’s top scorer last season was judged too soon after a slow start.
“I think for £17-$18 million that we paid for him, it was kind of a risk worth taking because if we’d gone out and spent £30-$40 million, we might have got a 20-goal a season striker.
“But for us, it was all about signing. We were never going to do that because we had to sign so many players. So to decimate the budget on one player with £30-$40 million was just not realistic to be honest.”
“So yeah it was a risk worth taking for me and I think it’s interesting.
“There’s an on-running joke with lots of Forest fans that players who come in from overseas clubs don’t get much time with the fan base to prove themselves and lots of people wrote Taiwo off very early on into his Forest career and I often thought that was a little bit harsh because he was adapting to a new style of football, it’s a tough league.
“And not only that, but we weren’t exactly creating loads of chances for our centre forwards.
