Mathys Tel, Nico Gonzalez, Donyell Malen: What can we expect from the Premier League’s newest arrivals? | Football News

Wondering what to expect from some of the Premier League’s biggest January imports? Here’s the inside line on Mathys Tel, Donyell Malen, Nico Gonzalez and more…

It has been a busy January up and down the Premier League, with almost £400m spent across the month on 45 signings – for transfer fees, loans or arrivals as free agents.

With 29 of them coming from clubs away from these shores, you may not be familiar with the skill, quality – and drawbacks – of some of the division’s newest arrivals.

Football expert Sam Tighe joined the Transfer Talk podcast during January to give the lowdown on some of the Premier League’s newest faces – let him fill you in on what to expect…

Nico Gonzalez might be best Rodri replacement available

He’s a good player. He came through at Barcelona along with Gavi and Pedri, and was seen as like the more kind of physical, sort of dominant holding player of the three.

And there was a nice dream that Pedri and Gavi and Nico Gonzalez would rise through the ranks together.

Pedri is a bit older than the other two but, as a trio, they are La Masia born and bred and they’ve got the perfect skillset.

It’s the No 6, it’s the No 8, it’s the No 10. Oh, look, it’s Busquets, Xavi and Iniseta reborn.

It hasn’t really happened, obviously. Lots of Barcelona financial issues playing into all of that, and injuries to both of the others too.

Nico has ended up at Porto and has kind of flourished. We know that players coming over from Porto and Benfica and the Portuguese league, they tend to adapt really, really well.

Nico’s a good player. And I think he does bring that frame and that physicality that Rodri has, that City have really lacked without him.

He’s 6ft 2in and a strong boy. All the other players they have in there, don’t really fit that brief.

And we’ve all watched City getting played through in midfield all season long, thinking why can’t you shut down attacks?

Nico is an attempt to fix that. But my one question over it is, if this was the answer all along, why wasn’t it done 33 days earlier?

We know that they sort of approached this deal at around £40m and ended up paying £60m, probably because it was so late.

That would suggest that this is no perfect solution. However, they were clearly feeling the pressure of time and felt like they had to do something because, right now, they’re not guaranteed to finish in the top four.

Forget the title. And Nico is probably as good an attempt at fixing this as I can really see on the market at this late stage.

How good is Mathys? It’s hard to Tel…

It’s a struggle to find anybody who can confidently tell you exactly how good Mathys Tel is at the moment, because he hasn’t played a lot of football over the last two-and-a-half years.

He’s made nine league starts in that time. And he’s one of those players who will probably end up looking back on his career and regretting joining a super club quite so early because he’s only 19 now. It was very, very early on in his career, and he really hasn’t been given the minutes that he has needed to develop.

Every time you see Tel play, he’s come off the bench in the 70th minute, Bayern are probably two or three goals up. He does some nice things on the left flank, scores a few nice goals, a few step overs, maybe goes to the byline, takes a defender away, whatever.

But what can you really take from that? What can you truly take from the last knockings of a game in which Bayern are two or three, sometimes four or five goals up?

You can’t use his stats either because all of his appearances are as a substitute. Last season, for example, he came off the bench 24 times, made six starts and played just over a thousand minutes.

That means everything he does statistically is all completely broken. All of his per-90 statistics are all over the place. So it’s really hard to get a gauge on exactly how good Tel is.

What we do know is when he signed for Bayern, he was one of the best young wide forwards in the world. He’d shown that at youth-tournament level and presumably that hasn’t gone away. The potential is still there, but how much better is he? It’s really hard to say.

Why Kevin Danso will be fine playing Angeball

He’s a good defender. He’s comfortable with the ball at his feet. He’s seven out of 10 in most categories. So that’s a big tick. I like that.

When he plays for Austria, he plays super-aggressive high-line football. Obviously, we know the Austrians press like crazy under Ralf Rangnick.

So if you’re asking if he suits Ange Postecoglou’s style, I would say we have enough evidence to say yes. And with that athleticism, it means that he can recover in behind as well.

It’s a nice second crack at Premier League football for him because a lot of people won’t know that he went on loan to Southampton a few years ago and it just went disastrously for him. It was not really his fault.

I think he played most of his football from left-back under Ralf Hasenhuttl. He made about six appearances and then just disappeared again.

But Danso spent a lot of time in England as a youngster in the academies, MK Dons and other places.

So actually, he’s been waiting for this for a long time, this crack at Premier League football. It went horribly the first time. I’m really pleased for him that he gets another go at it.

Can Donyell Malen find his forever home at Aston Villa?

Donyell Malen at his best is a very good player. But the constant feedback you get from anywhere he’s played post-PSV is that you don’t see it often enough. I’m wary of pouring scorn on this transfer having previously been critical of Manuel Akanji when he signed for Man City, and having watched him make a ton of mistakes for Borussia Dortmund.

Is it a case that the chaos club that is Dortmund, you take a player out of that eco-system, and you put them in a system and under a coach who really suits them?

What if Malen finds the coach he’s needed in the last few years in Unai Emery, in a very settled system? He has a history of scoring goals, but he’s had a few injuries and been super inconsistent.

He’s not a player who Villa are buying on the up, plugging him in and guaranteeing 10 goals. They’re seeing if Unai Emery can work his magic.