Scouted by Huddersfield recently and wanted by Newcastle over the summer when the option sign Nicolas Pépé disappeared, Jonathan Bamba cannot stay out of the headlines in France.
Refusing to sign a new contract with Saint-Etienne due to the club’s unwillingness to meet his demands, the 21-year-old is very likely to look elsewhere in January, with a free exit in June probably on the cards.
That is, of course, unless the Ligue 1 side decide to cash in on him this winter, but for that to happen, he needs to play well, and that isn’t happening.
If Huddersfield, or Newcastle for that matter, were watching Saint-Etienne’s game against Marseille on Sunday, they won’t have been impressed.
Labelled as one of the flops of the game by L’Equipe, the winger was at fault for Marseille’s second goal, too easily dispossessed in the middle of the park by Luiz Gustavo, who then gave it to Thauvin to set up Valère Germain.
Accused, once again, of being disappointing in the link up play, Bamba’s stats are also slightly deceiving this season.
While he has scored five goals, four of those have come from the penalty spot.
Whether this drop of form has anything to do with what’s going on off the pitch remains to be seen, but if Rafa Benitez and David Wagner were thinking about signing him as early as January a few months ago, they might now want to wait until the summer and not spend a chunk of their transfer budget on him.
If he’s struggling in Ligue 1, there’s every chance a move to the Premier League at clubs needing a creative spark like Newcastle and (maybe less so) Huddersfield, might be a bit premature.
