It’s three goals in four starts for Nick Woltemade since his arrival from Stuttgart, as he’s required almost no time to settle in as our starting striker in terms of his initial output.
It had looked like Sandro Tonali opened the scoring with his first-half strike, but the replay showed Woltemade elegantly flicked the ball past Kjell Scherpen to make it 1-0, scoring what will hopefully be th first of many Champions League goals for the big man.
Eddie Howe spoke highly of the 23-year-old before the game, but was even more glowing in his post-match appraisal, discussing his ability to bring our wide men into play, technical ability, presence and willingness to improve:
“Yeah I thought he performed really well, but I think as always with Nick, obviously learning about his game all the time like everyone else because we’ve had very little training time, you can see his link up play is such a big part of what he does.
“I think it (his link up play) was excellent today. He is often the pass before the wingers receive the ball, and the two Anthony’s got a lot of the ball because of him.
“His potential is high. His standout qualities are his technical ability and he looks like he has a knack for scoring goals, which is always good, along with his height and presence.
“It is an exciting start for him and he’s done really really well and most importantly he is willing and he wants to do the work and he wants to improve.”
Howe was then asked where his physical levels are currently at, believing he will only get better as we work on his fitness, physicality and tactical understanding:
“It is difficult to put a percentage on what he is right now, but there is more to come and there will be more to come physically, and more to come tactically as we go through the journey together with him.
“We’ll be doing a lot of physical work with him to get him robust enough for the Premier League, week in week out.”
Last but certainly not least, Howe ‘loved’ the fact he was eager to take the ball of Anthony Gordon for last night’s second spot kick, feeling this only shows his hunger to score goals:
“I love it! The best strikers I’ve worked with want to score. Even if there is a directive, they don’t care!
“They want to score. They want that responsibility. I’ve got no issue with that at all.”
The 6ft 6″ German really looked the part last night, not only scoring again and producing more classy hold up play, but showing signs of his unique dribbling ability for a player of his stature, as the clip below highlights…
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