You remember Timo Werner – blonde striker, scored a ton of goal in the Bundesliga, was signed by Chelsea for a cool £47.5m, suddenly looked completely lost and scored just 10 Premier League goals over two seasons before being shipped back home to RB Leipzig at a substantial loss. It wasn’t one of the great transfer success stories of the Roman Abramovich era.
But now he could be on his way back – at least, according to recent reports which suggest that Leipzig have offered the forward to several English clubs, with Crystal Palace and Fulham among those intrigued by the prospect of giving Werner a second bite of the cherry. But would that be good idea – and would they be getting the free-scoring forward who forced his way into the Germany team, or the diminished version that struggled so badly at Stamford Bridge?
Leipzig have started shopping him around for a deal, which would most likely be on a loan basis in the first instance, after Werner fell out of favour this season with new signing Loïs Openda now the first name on the teamsheet up front. Werner was subsequently relegated to being a part of a rotating carousel of supporting strikers, which includes Football Manager wonderkid Benjamin Šeško and Werner’s former front-line partner Yussuf Poulsen.
Werner didn’t play too badly over the course of his first season back in Germany, scoring 16 goals in 40 games across all competitions, but such numbers represented a major downturn compared to the fearsome figures he was putting up during his first spell in eastern Germany. Back then, he racked up 95 goals in 159 games, signing off with a 28-goal Bundesliga season that persuaded Chelsea to part with all that money.
It’s pretty clear to the naked eye that Werner simply isn’t the same player as he once was. He looks less confident in front of goal, less sure of his body’s movements, and seems to have lost a little bit of the ferocious acceleration that allowed him to get away from defenders so quickly a few years back. He simply isn’t the same threat in the final third that he once was, producing a pretty tame xG of 0.32 per game since returning to Leipzig.
But is he an entirely spent force? He’s still just 27 years old, after all, and it’s only a year or so since he was last in the Germany squad. His form has dipped and his head has dipped further, but perhaps the right coach, and the right situation, could turn things around for him. If most of the problems are psychological, then why not?
