Adama Traore finds his perfect teammate at West Ham – they can repeat 2020 Wolves partnership
It is fitting, really, that Taty Castellanos’ first goal in a West Ham United shirt arrived via the Argentine’s forehead.
On only his second appearance for the Londoners, Castellanos connected superbly with a Crysencio Summerville cross. Bulleting his new employers into the fourth round of the FA Cup, and bringing an end to a valiant Queens Park Rangers defensive display in the process.
The Argentina international is not the most prolific or ruthless of number nines. While Pablo Felipe’s conversion rate bettered even Erling Haaland’s back home in Portugal with Gil Vicente, Valentin ‘Taty’ Castellanos is more of a ‘scorer of great goals’ than a particularly great goalscorer.
Describe Taty Castellanos in ONE word! 🇦🇷
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He netted only 16 times in 76 Serie A games for Lazio. Yet, West Ham United signed Castellanos not as a number nine, or not solely as a number nine, but as a mobile, athletic, unpredictable attacker capable of running the channels, pressing from the front, linking the play, while putting his prodigious leap to very good use.
A leap he demonstrated when soaring through the air to set up a fourth-round FA Cup meeting with Burton Albion.
A leap that will bring a tingling feeling of champagne-soaked nostalgia to New York City FC supporters across the Atlantic. Castellanos opened the scoring in their 2021 MLS Cup final victory over Portland Timbers with one of his trademark salmon-like jumps, after all.
Taty Castellanos and Adama Traore could be a match made in West Ham United heaven
Photo by Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images
According to Data MB, Castellanos sat in the 83rd percentile across Europe in terms of aerial duels won last season, and in the 78th percentile this.
“Castellanos stands out aerially despite being under six feet tall,” West Ham’s official website wrote when welcoming the former Girona striker to East London a few weeks ago. “Winning 53.1% of his aerials whilst contesting 4.84 of these duels per match marked him out as one of the best target forwards in Italy last season.
“If directly transposed into the Premier League, Castellanos would rank fourth amongst strikers. Amazingly, that’s above players like Jean-Philippe Mateta, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Chris Wood, who are all credited for their impact as aerially dominant target strikers.
“Even if we factor for the difference in leagues, where aerial duels are approximately six per cent harder to win in England, Castellanos would still theoretically sit alongside Tolu Arokodare, Brian Brobbey and Erling Haaland as one of just four Premier League strikers to win more than 50 per cent of his aerial duels.”
Nuno Espirito Santo welcomed Adama Traore to West Ham this week, after the Londoners agreed a £2 million deal with Fulham.
It was under Nuno, at Wolves, that Traore recorded a career-best nine Premier League assists in the 2019/20 campaign. No fewer than seven of those assists were put away by Raul Jimenez.
Nothing summed up the fearsome Traore – Jimenez partnership better than the goal they produced against David Moyes’ West Ham at Molineux that season.
Traore stormed down the right and lofted a delicious cross to the back post. Jimenez ghosted in and headed home past Lukasz Fabianski.
Scarles over Diouf? Traore on the bench? 🤔
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Traore and Raul Jimenez terrorised the Premier League at Wolves
Nuno hopes that Traore will bring his ‘unique’ qualities to the Hammers, half a decade on. In Castellanos, West Ham’s new number 17 should find himself supplying the ammunition for a striker who possesses many of the same qualities as his old Molineux sparring partner.
“I speak with Raul, and I know which positions are best to put him in to try and push the ball towards the net,” Traore said at during their Black Country heyday.
“I know the movement I have to do. I know which situation I can produce. This made me more confident because, when [my teammates] give me the ball, I know where Raul is going to be.”
Traore could make his West Ham debut against Chelsea on Saturday night.
Should the Spanish speedster take to the pitch for the first time in claret and blue, expect to see him square up his full-back at every opportunity, dart down the wing, and loft a cross in the direction of Castellanos; a striker who seems destined to benefit from a wideman almost tailor-made to provide the service Taty thrives upon.
“Adama, I know him very well. I’ve worked with him many years and I know him,” Nuno said of Traore during his press conference on Thursday.
“He’s unique. There are not many players with his ability in one-v-one situations, with his speed, his pace, and I think he is going to give us many things that we need.
“The threat he possesses and his energy, not only on the pitch but in the dressing room and the training room. He’s a special person to have around. It’s not up to me to judge what happened before [regarding his lack of minutes at Fulham]. I’m just happy to have him here!
“We haven’t decided yet [on the lineup to face Chelsea]. Adama is physically OK. He can be an option.”
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