Diogo Jota

[Irishnev]

Full interview here:

https://streamable.com/bl9s7s

Is the one for Thiago floating around anywhere?

[BobTheCharmer]

Nobody leans on things any more...

Good.

[Zapater]

At the price, I would have been tempted to look at Guedes instead. He'd probably be available for a lot less. He's been pretty bad recently and has had injury issues, but feel a good Guedes would be better and could tick the same boxes. Will be interesting to see how Jota develops.

Is the one for Thiago floating around anywhere?

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7wb3a7

[Corndog]

Disagree,

Guedes had 5 goals and 2 assists last season. He has flair but lacks end product massively.

Jota is prem proven in a team that presses fast from the front when out of possession

[Gray]

Am I the only one who doesn't get it. Seen his reel and I don't see how he gets game time.

[RedReet]

Probably been posted already but...

On the opening day of their 2020-21 Premier League campaign, Wolves swatted aside Sheffield United 2-0. At times they played with freedom and flair, their forwards fluidly interchanged… Raul Jimenez scored, Daniel Podence and Pedro Neto provided an assist apiece, it was Wolves 4.0.

Unused substitute Diogo Jota didn’t play a single minute. And no one really batted an eyelid.

Jota tailed off towards the end of last season and endured a frustrating couple of months, missing good chances and looking desperately short of confidence, to the extent that he only started three of Wolves’ final eight games. When Nuno Espirito Santo’s team lined up for one of the club’s biggest matches in 50 years, a Europa League quarter-final against Sevilla, Jota wasn’t in the XI. He wasn’t even the first attacking substitute Nuno sent on that night. It was arguably the lowest point of Jota’s three-year Wolves career.

It’s in this context that a transfer fee of up to £45 million from Liverpool represents outstanding business for Wolves.

Not even six weeks after that loss to Sevilla, he’s moving from the Molineux bench to the champions of England. Liverpool supporters may wonder why exactly that is.

Well, for a start, Jota is Wolves’ best forward on his day. Better even than Adama Traore. His skill set, work rate, unstinting tenacity, strength, dribbling ability and his goals and assists output place him above Traore, Neto and Podence.

He’s taken to English football like bread to butter since arriving in summer 2017, formed at-times telepathic understandings with Jimenez and Jonny Castro Otto, been fearless in attack, performed an outstanding job for the team on endless occasions and been kicked to kingdom come and dusted himself down and got on with it. Qualities that Jurgen Klopp clearly admires.

He’s provided memories that will last for decades and he’s only 23. His best is yet to come.

It’s in this context that a transfer fee of up to £45 million from Liverpool could represent outstanding business… for Liverpool.

Nuno decided at the start of the summer that Jota, who only moved house in Wolverhampton a couple of months ago and recently announced he’s expecting his first child with his partner Rute, could move on for the right price, hence his unused substitute appearance on Monday at Bramall Lane and a hasty exit from Molineux on Thursday night before the Carabao Cup defeat to Stoke.

It’s felt, primarily, that while he may go on and do great things at Liverpool, he’s peaked at Wolves.

More importantly, Wolves’ style is evolving. Their swashbuckling counter-attacks will always be there, but Nuno doesn’t want those counter-attacks to define how his team score goals. He wants more possession, he wants to dominate opponents from back to front, from minute one to minute 90. Wolves are changing.

Jota is perhaps the ultimate counter-attacking player and Wolves believe that different players (Podence and Neto for a start, but in time Fabio Silva and future signings) will be better suited to the new style.

Just when Wolves looked to have, by normal standards, strength in depth in the forward areas, Jota’s exit leaves a vacancy to fill on the face of it, but The Athletic understands he won’t be directly replaced during this window.

Nuno reiterated last week his unstinting desire for a small senior squad. Jota being on the bench didn’t fit that philosophy.

Wolves do hope to strengthen elsewhere in the coming weeks, but in Jimenez, Neto, Podence, Traore and Silva they feel they have enough competition in the attacking positions, particularly in a new-look 3-5-2 formation which looks set to stay for the time being.

It should also be stated that the Fosun business model doesn’t align with Wolves rushing out and spending £45 million on a proven replacement. They’ll buy young, they’ll look for bargains, they’ll sell for a big profit before the player’s value depreciates. Silva, fellow 18-year-old Ki-Jana Hoever and Vitinha, 20, all fit the textbook recruitment model, not a £45 million ready-made forward.

The primary concern with Jota’s departure — and that of Matt Doherty to Tottenham Hotspur — is the goals and assists they take with them… a combined 34 in all competitions last season.

Traore, who scored four times in the Premier League last season, has been identified as a source of extra goals, and he was notably handed a shoot-on-sight licence against Sheffield United. Elsewhere, the mantle will pass to Podence and Neto to make up the shortfall.

From a small sample size of 550 minutes in a Wolves shirt, Podence (one goal, four assists) has provided either a goal or an assist every 110 minutes. Neto (six goals, five assists) is up at one goal involvement every 160 minutes. Jota’s 26 goals and 13 assists during his two top-flight seasons with Wolves see his figure at a goal or assist every 146 minutes.

While the fee is a maximum of £45 million with add-ons, Wolves will initially receive less than £4.5 million of that in the next 12 months. That’s a common way that they do business for their incoming transfers and indeed some outgoing, such as Helder Costa to Leeds United. Wolves will receive £5 million a year for the next four years from Elland Road.

Their flexibility was said to be key to the Jota deal, but while Wolves’ first-year income is meagre, Liverpool will ultimately pay more over time than they’d likely have been willing to shell out in one lump sum. For example, Wolves would have accepted a straight £35 million offer, but the champions wanted to spread the cost long-term and therefore paid extra because of that.

In Jota, Costa (£20 million) and Doherty (£15 million, paid up front by Spurs), Wolves have negotiated three deals that will eventually see them receive £80 million. Costa was surplus to requirements, Jota had dipped out of the first team and Doherty would have little resale in two years’ time given he turns 29 in January.

That long-term business logic, as you’d expect from an investment firm like Fosun, is sound, but ultimately fans care little for profit, loss and bank balances; they want Wolves to kick on this season and challenge for the top six and they want to see their favourite players stay at the club. Fosun is a business, Fosun isn’t sentimental, Fosun wants a return on its investment.

Jota will be missed. He wasn’t perfect — his scoring record was streakier than a pound of smoked bacon, he could easily go two months without contributing anything in front of goal and at that age he wasn’t the finished article.

But at his best he was unstoppable. An electric whippet of skill, trickery and fearlessness.

Via the Jorge Mendes carousel, he sacrificed Champions League football with Porto for the Championship, as did Nuno, Ruben Neves and Willy Boly.

There was his double salvo to beat Nottingham Forest early in that Championship season. A few weeks later he left Aston Villa duo James Chester and Robert Snodgrass doing a Laurel & Hardy impression when they tripped over each other trying to block a stunning drive into the corner which sent Molineux berserk.

Add to those his goal against Chelsea which ended a 13-game scoreless streak at the start of the first Premier League campaign; a breathtaking hat-trick against Leicester City including a last-minute 4-3 winner which led Nuno to take leave of his senses and run onto the pitch; a last-gasp equaliser against Crystal Palace early last season which got Wolves out of a massive bottom-three-shaped hole; a breathtaking 11-minute hat-trick against Besiktas; another treble against Espanyol; a goal at Spurs in March before he set up Jimenez for the winner.

Jota Wolves Manchester United goal FA Cup
(Photo: Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images)
And then the small matter of an era-defining strike, a seminal moment in Nuno’s reign, that heart-stopping, lung-bursting, emotion-inducing winner against Manchester United in a 2018-19 FA Cup quarter-final (above). He ran from halfway, left Luke Shaw eating grass and kerplunked his shot past Sergio Romero. Molineux shook to its core. Time stopped. People cried. It was the goal that defined a generation. Not bad, Diogo.

His ability to gain 40 yards in the blink of eye was exceptional. At first in England, he would feign injury and bleat to the referee — he soon cut that out and used his deceptive strength to shrug off defenders who hopelessly clawed at him like deranged zombies trying to catch the last surviving human.

It always felt like Jota would be one who went to the very top with Wolves, should they get there, from the Championship to the Champions League. That’s what he does on Football Manager, taking charge of small teams and guiding them to glory. It’s how he saw his Wolves career, too.

But this is a different Wolves era, one where sentimentality carries absolutely no weight whatsoever.

Jota joins an increasing list of fan favourites who’ve departed either before or at their peak; Doherty, Ivan Cavaleiro, Barry Douglas.

It’s worked for Wolves so far.

[Mark79]

Am I the only one who doesn't get it. Seen his reel and I don't see how he gets game time.

Keeping in mind that rotation is a must this season, have a look at the stats on page 1 of this thread. Then also remember that Klopp has improved just about every player we've signed.

[Liverpool]

Also football is played in 90 minute segments and not 15 second clips.

[peekay]

Am I the only one who doesn't get it. Seen his reel and I don't see how he gets game time.

I think part of the reason why his youtube compilations don't look that impressive is that he does not have an extraordinary attribute - good pace but not electric; has skill but not the type of control which causes you to jump out of your chair, good finisher but not the type who will convert half chances into goals, good creative passer but not like De Bruyne level.

Reading various articles about him, it looks like his biggest attributes are flexibility - can play multiple positions, game intelligence, and mentality. He is good at a number of things and can put them together to make an impact.
Difficult to make impressive youtube compilations highlighting those.

[Gray]

Obviously I hope he's mustard. Klopp knows stuff.

[Slinky Skills]

https://twitter.com/lfcgdon/status/1307032166015078405

A few things of note after watching that.

He's very good with both feet

He's actually quite clinical, he picks some good areas of the net to bury goals which makes it more difficult for keepers to save

I like his passion, he looks like a really passionate guy who will get the crowd and fans here in Liverpool, he also looks a bit of a loon too lol

Will be very interesting to see how he gets on, I've not seen much of him so I can't comment on what he's like.

[Irishnev]

At the price, I would have been tempted to look at Guedes instead. He'd probably be available for a lot less. He's been pretty bad recently and has had injury issues, but feel a good Guedes would be better and could tick the same boxes. Will be interesting to see how Jota develops.



https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7wb3a7

[Fredo]

Diogo Jota

Am I the only one who doesn't get it. Seen his reel and I don't see how he gets game time.

I’m sure a lot of people said the same thing when we signed Sadio Mane. Jota’s scoring record is really good and he is only 23. I think it’s a great signing.

[Robbie-9-Fowler]

I'm hoping the analytics are right on him because like others for the price I'm struggling to see it of the limited amount I've seen of him.

Then again, we did think Salah was back up for Mane

[baitman]

Salah and Mane were both dead certs for me.

No whelm for jota