Pablo Felipe is now 13 games without a goal since joining West Ham United from Portuguese outfit Gil Vicente during the January transfer window.
If his prolific first half of the season in Iberia proved anything, though, it is that Pablo is a pretty neat finisher when given the chance.
Pablo plundered ten goals in 12 Gil Vicente starts before that £18 million move to West Ham United. Of course, this may incur awkward questions about the quality of Portuguese football – questions Viktor Gyokeres and Darwin Nunez did little to dispel – but ten goals from an XG of just over five is highly impressive, regardless of the competition.
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Pablo scores a lovely goal 4 minutes in…
The Hammers released a handful of clips from Rush Green on Friday, some 23 hours before their 3pm kick-off away to Brentford, via their official YouTube channel.
And the finish Pablo produced around four minutes and 20 seconds hardly painted the picture of a centre-forward short of confidence.
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Crysencio Summerville started the move and El Hadji Malick Diouf drilled the ball across.
Pablo then opened up his body to slide a gorgeous first-time strike past Mads Hermansen, the ball caressing the net to much fervour from the coaches behind the goal.
In ten Premier League appearances, Pablo has managed only eight shots so far. He is a proven over-performer of his XG in Portugal, but has racked up a miserly ‘expected goals’ tally of 0.66 at West Ham.
Nuno has tended to field Pablo as the support-striker behind Taty Castellanos. In the same timeframe, the Argentine has racked up four league goals from an XG of 3.6. One wonders how many goals Pablo would have to his name if he was getting on the end of the chances supplied to Castellanos.
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As West Ham legend Tony Gale said during last week’s 2-1 win over Everton – a match in which Callum Wilson scored a stoppage-time winner off the bench – Pablo is not doing himself any favours either.
His work-rate and off-the-ball intensity has made a big difference. But if he wants to end that barren run at the 14th time of asking, some more time spent in goalscoring positions would come in very handy.
“These two boys have given them a bit of energy,” Gale said of Pablo and Castellanos.
“[But] Pablo has just got to play on the half-turn more. Sometimes he turns back [into pressure]. Pablo, hardworking though he is, just tends to slow things down for West Ham in there.”
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