Excited about this guy, always fun to sign someone you know nothing about from an esteemed academy and see that they're all upset to lose him...!
Well I went and scoured the Sporting fan forum. They reckon he will be as good as Fatawu and Palhinha. Seems decent praise to me.
Just listened to his Estoril manager Vasco Seabra talking about him to the BBC: Talking about him is easy for me, he's a humble, hard working boy with a lot of talent. It's never difficult to speak about a player with as much talent as he has and I think the characteristics of this player are so well-suited to English football. He's a very aggressive player with great ability to cover a lot of space, he can run a lot of kilometres without tiring and he is happy to play closer to the defence to help create the first phase of constructing an attacking move. We used him a lot to come back and help us to begin the attacking phase of play. He can also play closer to the goal. He always listened and asked his teammates how he can help them. I believe that the Premier League is the right step and the ideal championship for him to continue his growth now. His target needs to be to reach the Portugal national team now and have the high-level career that we think he can have. He's really strong, the way the competition goes in England is better for him because he always take a step forward, a step forward, a step forward. He's really aggressive and strong in his body and he plays with a lot of intensity. In Portugal, he fought against Benfica, Porto, some of the most famous and best teams here in Portugal and he wants to take a step forward against them. Here in Portugal, everyone compares him a lot to Matheus Nunes [Manchester City]. Fernandes has characteristics that are similar, you will see that. He is capable to play in more spaces than Nunes though, he can play in the first phase or close to the goal, but at the same time, if you want to play with inside wingers who come between the lines, he can help you with that.
How much did we end up paying for him? Jury’s out for me on this one, because he’s not one of the positions that I think we really need to improve on and it doesn’t even seem likely that he’ll come into the team straight away and improve it. That’s what we need. If we bring in starter quality players in the positions that we still need to in addition to Fernandes then fine, a player with potential can be exciting. But if we don’t, and the money from this guy could have been better used on players to improve our starting 11 now, then I’ll be annoyed.
I think this guy will improve our starting XI very quickly. Sounds like he has a lot of the attributes that Martin requires in his tactics. Really looking forward to watching him play.
How much first team football has he played? Whose spot is he taking in the team? Like I said, if we still bring in starter quality in the positions we really need to strengthen then I have no problem with this. If we don’t, and Fernandes doesn’t improve the first team within the first 6 months in the position he does play, then it’ll be another failed transfer gamble imo.
I think he probably eases Smallbone out of the team. Smallbone is a tidy technical player but he is very one-paced and not dynamic at all. Fernandes dynamism is a level up on anything Smallbone has done in a Saints shirt (not to **** on Will, I like him!)
I do get the Lavia/Livramento vibe from this guy in the sense that he can contribute straight away, so looking forward to seeing how he does Hopefully he is as good as those 2 but we definitely need more at either end of the pitch to give us a chance
Interesting to hear his role was often to drop back and transition defence into attack. Might start out as Downes’s understudy?
I think we’ve got a core of young talents now who have the potential to impact the team this season and I’m sure at least two or three will be starters by the end of the year Dibling, SAA, Fernandes, Big Les, Ronnie & Woodie
I see this as a great signing and am keeping fingers crossed that he can have a Lavia level impact. What I do wonder is why we prioritised this one. We now have Mateus, Lesley, Flynn, Aribo, Smallbone, Alcaraz, Lallana, Dibling and Charles competing for the 3/4 central midfield slots. Aribo and Smallbone in particular must be feeling threatened. Depth is good but one of Lesley/Mateus' spots would have been better used for a forward maybe.
