Gift Orban apears to be back to his best with Fulham now looking to bring the Gent striker to the Premier League following his aborted summer switch to Tottenham Hotspur.
The phrase ‘form is temporary’ comes to mind.
And as Gift Orban plundered a 63-minute hat-trick past Icelandic outfit Breidablik in the Europa Conference League on Thursday night, a thrilling young centre-forward who had been lined up to potentially take Harry Kane’s place at Tottenham Hotspur proved beyond all doubt that his class is permanent.
Tottenham may rue Gift Orban call
That, remarkably, was his fifth treble of 2023 alone, more hat-tricks under his belt than even the irrepressible Erling Haaland (four) has managed for Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Manchester City (Het Nieuwsblad).
Suddenly, all the hand-wringing that followed a rare drought at the start of the current campaign feels more than a little silly, Orban doing like Kane all those years ago and proving – with five goals in his last three games – that he is more than a ‘one season wonder’.
“Why do Ajax and PSV sell players like Antony for 95 million euros and others for easily 40 to 50 million? And why should we think that 30 million euros is too much (for Orban),” Gent CEO Michael Louwagie asked Het Nieuwsblad a few weeks ago, ‘angry’ at suggestions that Tottenham backed out of discussions in August due to the youngster’s £25 million price-tag (Voetbal Krant).
More hat-tricks than Erling Haaland
Spurs may have had reservations about betting the farm on Orban – still relatively unproven at the time a few months after arriving in Belgian football from Norway – but Fulham’s enduring struggles in front of goal could see the Cottagers pick up where their London neighbours left off over the summer.
Orban now has 31 goals in 41 Gent appearances.
And, according to TEAMtalk, Fulham have identified the former Stabaek ‘phenomenon’ as a potential replacement for the much-missed Aleksandr Mitrovic.
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