Pots; Emi Buendia

Norwich City are not supposed to have players like Emi Buend’ia.

English football has been twisted and gerrymandered in such a way that incredibly skilful players aren’t supposed to find themselves in the second tier league. If you have a brilliant young player at your club, then a big academy is supposed to come along and hoover them up. If the player is known, then you don’t have the money to buy or pay them. And if the player is an unknown, languishing say, on loan to a club in the Spanish 2rd tier, then you aren’t supposed to be able to pay to have the scouts to find them, let alone the ability to convince him to start a new life in England, in what some consider to be the toughest second tier league in the world.

And so there Emi was; playing last season in Spain for Cultural Leonesa on loan from Getafe, a team that is only really known outside of Spain (well, Le’on and Castile really) for once wearing a kit that looked like a tuxedo – much to the joy of football banter social media accounts everywhere.

Cultural Leonesa were relegated, so for Norwich to suddenly turn up and go in for the attacking midfielder may have initially seemed like one of those wild punts you make on Football Manager, because a cheap player you’ve randomly scouted once had a youth career at Real Madrid.

But, real life is not like Football Manager (sorry kids, it isn’t) and Farke, Webber and the scouting team had seen something. They believed that this player, like many of the other players they have signed over the last two years, had fallen through the cracks. The filter had failed. He’d been missed.

And boy were they right.

The clich’e of the Championship is that it is a tough and hard league, because referees are lenient on tackles, the teams are closely matched and everyone gets exhausted from playing twice a week.

And, unlike most bullshit clich’es and stereotypes in football, this is actually true. Getting out of the Championship is a bloody nightmare. Deploying skill and playing passing football is often too much of a risk in what is such an unpredictable league, so a brand of football often described politely as “solid”, and less politely as “shit house”, is widely adopted and has the unfortunate side effect of often working (I mean, Tony Pulis is the manager of a football team in this division and Mick McCarthy only left recently).
So, when it comes to players, there are some who just don’t fit in and don’t “get it”, there are some who are born for the league and slot in as “solid” options and there are some who fall somewhere in between.
Rarely, however, there comes along a player so good they just show everyone up. Even more rarely, does that player play for Norwich City.

Emi often gets compared to Wes Hoolahan, mainly as he is seen by most to be the incumbent to his position, however, as I see him bolt forward, I can’t help make comparisons to another player Norwich weren’t supposed to have: Darren Huckerby.

Emi’s explosiveness, for there’s no non-metaphorical word for the combination of pace, skill, ability to pass and speed that he possess, is so far removed and a class above the typical standard and style of the Championship that he, just like Huckerby, is almost unplayable.

If you watch games from the 03/04 season, you can see that defenders are absolutely terrified of Huckerby. There are three, sometimes four around him and yet he drifts and cuts inside, slots the cross in and bang – Goal.

It’s the same with Buendia. Defenders just can’t cope with him. They are so used to the methodical attacking midfielder in this division (who, at the risk of ire from the manager, are never trying anything too extravagant, never anything too unorthodox) that he has completely bamboozled them. And then, to top it all off, Emi does possess one classic solid Championship player quality; in that he can bloody tackle. He was (and might still be, I can’t seem to find the stat) Norwich’s number one tackler. And guess what happens when you make tackles high up the pitch, and then have the skill to completely confound, confuse and unhinge defenders? 8 goals and 14 assists, that’s what. Chase, harry, tackle, defender on arse, pass, goal, repeat.

Additionally, while all the chat about our youth talent has been, understandably, regarding our young British players, it’s easy to forget that Emi is only 13 months older than Jamal Lewis. To do what he does at the age of 22, in a foreign country, with a different language to his first and in a league where he is too good so he has to be hacked down and fouled to be stopped, is so extraordinarily remarkable that this is why Emiliano Buend’ia Stati is the Norwich City Player of the Season.

He is fucking incredible. He is the sort of player that would never normally put on a Norwich City shirt and yet he is. He’s ours. And we need to savour every minute he’s with us and, of course, every minute we’re with him.