Every Scottish football season, this writer is always fascinated with the improvements made by players from one campaign to the next.
That may sound confusingly naive. After all, the whole point of being a professional athlete is improving on what you have done before. But I’m not talking about the incremental steps taken by players as they gradually move up through the levels. I’m talking about those who don’t even resemble their former selves; when the transformation is so stark that you and your friends constantly joke about whether it is indeed, in fact, the same player. Or if they have a twin brother and thought I’d be a laugh for them to trade places for ten months.
Such improvements are witnessed throughout the leagues each campaign, but they’re a little rarer in the top flight. Typically it’s someone going from average to good, not from a potential ‘competition winner’ to a valued member of the first team.
Yet in this season’s Scottish Premiership there are at least three cases where a player has gone from being a supposed lost cause to showing that they, do in fact, belong at this level.
We’ll start at Hibs. I was in attendance last season at the Tony Macaroni Arena in my previous career as an Edinburgh football journalist to see one of the worst 45 minutes of football I’ve ever seen from an individual player. Jair Tavares, a Portuguese winger brought in from Benfica B in the summer, was hyped up by Easter Road management upon his arrival and given the No.10 shirt, but already by this mid-August encounter it looked like he was going to fall way short of their expectations. Having consulted Wyscout to see the competition he was facing prior to his Scottish top-flight switch, I wasn’t entirely surprised, but it still didn’t prepare me for this showing in West Lothian. When I say he gave the ball away every time he touched it, I mean he literally gave the ball away every time he touched it.
He largely receded from view after that encounter with Lee Johnson not trusting him for the rest of the former manager’s laugh-a-minute tenure at Easter Road. But Tavares was granted a new start when Nick Montgomery walked in the door and has been a staple of the matchday squad ever since. Is he the best winger in the league? No. He’s got electric pace and is great at running with the ball, while his trick of being able to spin away from defenders and motor inside works very well in Monty’s two-banks-of-four system. But he needs to add more of a consistent end product and, while he works hard and stays focused, could do with bulking up a lot more to make him a stronger defender.
Regardless, he’s now an asset to the squad and has helped Hibs gain some points in what's been another bleak campaign for their support to endure.
It’s a similar case at St Mirren with Toyosi Olusanya. This is perhaps even a more extreme example, for Olusanya wasn’t just “I can’t remember the last time I saw a player this bad” levels in Paisley, he was also the same when he went on loan to Arbroath in the Scottish Championship. I did a podcast with a couple of Arbroath supporters after Dick Campbell’s departure in which they selected the club’s worst XI under the legendary manager, and Olusanya got a place in the team. Remember, Arbroath were down at the depths of League Two when Campbell initially took over.
Right from the start of 2023/24 it was apparent a massive change has happened this summer. Like Tavares, does he get a game in his side’s strongest XI? Probably not. He still doesn’t score enough goals for a forward, but his pace and directness is a real strength and can be used from the start against the right opposition (Hibs at Easter Road, a good example) or coming off the bench to run rings around tired defenders (Motherwell in the League Cup). Boss Stephen Robinson has since credited the improvement with Olusanya “simplifying” the game.
But the best example of transformative players this season simply has to be Theo Bair. Everyone who was previously aware of the St Johnstone flop chuckled heartily after it was announced Motherwell had decided to take him off their hands with a year still left on his deal. Chiefs at McDiarmid Park must’ve had to hit the mute button several times in order to suppress laughs when the call initially came through from Lanarkshire. That may sound harsh, but this was a striker who had scored just once in 37 appearances and did appear to have many other attributes to fall back on.
Motherwell have been a bit of a basket case this term - as evidenced again last week by the announcement manager Stuart Kettlewell had been granted a contract extension some time ago, it just hadn’t been communicated to supporters - but Bair has risen above the calamity and is one of the star players in the Fir Park side.
Largely this has been due to Kettlewell realising what Callum Davidson and Steven MacLean couldn’t. There’s little point in knocking long balls up to the towering Canadian. He’s either going to get beaten in the air or it’s going to bounce off him. But if you get him running the channels and looking to move in behind then he’s a proper weapon who has racked up ten goals this season, including nine in his last ten games.
Of course, all of these players could regress after these “purple patches”, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. As football fans, we too often write off players before they’ve really been given a proper chance. The fact is, if they make it to this level, they have the talent within them to have a positive aspect. Hell, the majority of players within the SPFL have the ability to impact a game at the highest level. They typically all start there as youngsters, after all. What separates the best from the rest is the consistency to do it on a weekly basis, across several seasons.
There are factors to consider when evaluating players, especially new arrivals into the first team. They could be taking a while to adapt to a new culture and completely different style of football (Tavares). They could be trying too hard to prove themselves and make a good impression (Olusanya). Or they could be playing for a manager who doesn’t know how, or care to elevate their strengths while masking their weaknesses (Bair). Patience is often required but is in very short supply when it comes to football fans, particularly in the social media age.
We could all be a little more mindful of that in future, but then again it’s a lot more fun and more narratively satisfying when you do completely write someone off and then they shove that hasty evaluation right back in your face.
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