Paul Onuachu made a mistake joining Southampton in the January transfer window with the former Genk striker failing to score a single goal before suffering relegation from the Premier League.
After missing out on a move to Wolves during the summer of 2022 – the Molineux outfit choosing Sasa Kalajdzic instead – Paul Onuachu simply leapt at the opportunity to put pen to paper with Southampton five months ago.
Looking back now, even the player himself may have to accept that he acted a little hastily, racing to put pen to paper with a Premier League outfit without considering exactly which Premier League outfit he was joining.
Southampton finished bottom. Onuachu didn’t score a single goal.
And – to make matters worse – he quickly fell out of favour once the manager who signed him, Nathan Jones, was replaced by Ruben Selles shortly after the window closed.
The 6ft 7ins Nigeria international started just one of the Saints’ last 14 matches.
Does Paul Onuachu have a future at Southampton?
“That was definitely not a good choice,” Hein Vanhaezebrouck, Onuachu’s former coach at KRC Genk, tells Het Laatste Nieuws .
“You don’t go to the team that is last in the Premier League, with the risk of ending up in the Championship.”
The good news is that Onuachu, presuming he stays at St Mary’s, should find life a little easier next term. Southampton’s squad is full of exciting youngsters, as well as a handful of proven Championship talent a la Adam Armstrong and James Bree.
And in Russell Martin, who has agreed to take over on the banks of the Solent, Southampton should soon have a manager who turned Joel Piroe and Michael Obafemi into one of the division’s finest strike partnerships.
Onuachu, providing he is given the service, has the potential to be a prolific goalscorer in the second-tier. He was the Jupiler League’s top scorer when leaving Genk in January. He hit 58 across his final two seasons at the Belgian giants too.
“At 1pm (on deadline day), I had a conversation with a very emotional Paul,” Genk director Dimitri De Conde recalls. “He felt his dream slip away again. ‘Please, let me go. This could be my very last chance’, he begged.
“I had to make it clear to him that there were two conditions under which the deal could succeed. One; the numbers had to be correct. And, two; we had to be able to bring in a replacement.
“I had already had a conversation about it with coach Wouter Vrancken in the morning. At a certain point, you can no longer say ‘no’ on a human level, Wouter agreed. Especially because certain promises were made.”
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