Taiwo Awoniyi is a name Liverpool fans should really be keeping an eye on, as the Nigerian striker is making a real name for himself in Belgium on loan from Anfield.
Scoring regularly with Royal Excel Mouscron since January, the 21-year-old has caught the attention of most of the media, and he sat down with Sport/Foot this week to discuss how things were going.
One of the big parts of the interview was his failed six months at Gent during the first half of the campaign, which led his initial loan to be cancelled before returning to the same league with a different team straight away.
Failing to score in 16 league appearances, it appeared Awoniyi’s season was headed towards disaster.
He said: “Gent is a great place, with a great club, but maybe I was in the right place at the wrong time. You have to look at the team when I arrived. There were a lot of new players. You also need to look at their situation: we weren’t winning. A manager was fired, another replaced him with a new philosophy, which I wasn’t a part of.
“I came on for maybe 5, 10 or 20 minutes. It’s true that I could have made the difference. I didn’t, but what I want to say is that the club, as a whole, wasn’t in the best place.”
One of the first things the Liverpool forward did when he swapped Gent for Mouscron was score against his former club in a 2-1 away win back on February 10th.
Maintaining there was no ‘revenge’ going through his head when the ball hit the back of the net, Awoniyi isn’t ashamed of his first half of the season. It was just one of those things.
He continued: “I did everything to succeed. I can get up and say that to anyone. I also need to be honest with myself. I did my best, but didn’t manage it. Up until the last moment, when it wasn’t working out, I kept telling myself that I was staying there, because I knew I needed to play.”
It wasn’t to be, and it seems he’s glad he didn’t stay, as he’s led Mouscron on a 7 game unbeaten streak, scoring six goals and picking up two goals along the way.
Liverpool will be happy with the change in fortune.
