Juninho Bacuna has signed for Huddersfield Town from FC Groningen for an undisclosed fee. Unlike other recent “undisclosed” transfer fees, there’s no mention in the press of how much we’ve spent. The Transfer markt website values him at £1.35m, but I suspect we’ll have paid more than that.
Who is Juninho Bacuna?
He’s a promising 20-year-old Dutch footballer that has played a surprising number of games for his age. Bacuna has played all his career at FC Groningen, but has experience of playing youth international football for the Netherlands, and was selected for the U21 team as recently as last March.
He’s played over 80 times in the Dutch top-flight, so has been playing first team football for a number of years. To put that into context, Philip Billing is two years older and has only managed 64 appearances for Town in all competitions.
Bacuna plays a similar role to Billing by the looks of the clips I’ve seen of him, sitting deep in midfield, but looking to get forward to support attacks and spread play with his range of passing.
The clips of Juninho on YouTube show a player that’s comfortable on the ball and can open up defences with incisive passing. He’s also curled in a few wonderful looking free kicks too, which is a skill Town could make the most of. For those that are interested in this sort of thing, he’s also likely to have fancy patterns shaved into his hair.
Before getting too excited about him, it’s worth looking at some of the “stadia” he’s played at. It looks more like Sunday League than Premier League, so there may be an adjustment period while he steps up to the pace of the English top-flight.
How will he fit in at Town?
Central midfield is probably the toughest part of the pitch to break into, with Mooy, Hogg, Williams and Billing already competing for two starting slots. Juninho will be at the back of that queue of players, and may find his opportunities limited to cup games and the under 23s to begin with.
David Wagner is often cautious about playing younger players, both Billing and Sabiri will have hoped to play more football last season than they did. Bacuna is going to have to prove in training that he’s capable of holding his own in one of the most competitive leagues in the world before Wagner picks him regularly.
What does David Wagner say about the signing?
Wagner states that Juninho has been brought in because Dean Whitehead has retired, but that seems like an odd justification for a signing when Whitehead barely played last season.
He also mentioned how Bacuna has the qualities of both an attacking and defensive midfielder, so he’s likely to be able to adjust to the various tactical systems Town play.
Wagner’s final comment on the transfer was: “We will give him all the support he needs to make the best out of the potential he definitely has.” which again suggests he’s one for the future.
TerrierSpirit.com opinion
This feels like a similar singing to Sabiri last season. A young player with a lot of talent and promise, but likely to need time before he’s ready for the cut and thrust of the Premier League. It’s a bit hard to get too enthused if we’re barely going to see him in coming season.
Having said that, simply having a player called Juninho is exciting and I’m sure plenty of people will have his name put on their new Town shirts, if only because of his namesake. If Juninho shows even half the talent of the Juninho that played for Middlesbrough all those years ago, we’ll have got ourselves a good player.
I worry we may have to prepare for life without Mooy at some stage. If Chelsea could rustle up £40m for Danny Drinkwater how big an offer for Mooy could we turn down? Particularly when you compare his performance against Pogba the other day.