Ayoze Pérez’s game is all about subtlety and nuance. Big on clever movement, football intelligence and two-footed technical ability, the Newcastle United forward has the apparent knack of thinking half a yard faster than opponents.
There are shades of Jari Litmanen – and compliments rarely come bigger – David Silva, Peter Beardsley and Matt Jansen about his three-dimensional, “between the lines” game but, at only 22, Pérez has an awful lot to learn.
Wonderful as he invariably is to watch and exhilarating as his change of pace can be, Pérez can sometimes perform some of his most eye-catching manoeuvres where he is unlikely to wreak real damage. His decision-making is not yet consistently sound. Those moments when he can be forced into attacking cul-de-sacs serve as reminders that a player still learning – albeit quickly – to camouflage his relative lack of strength and power is in only his second season in the Premier League.
There is talk that Manchester United are keen to sign him in January, as are Tottenham, who had a bid for Pérez turned down by Newcastle in the summer. Meanwhile Manchester City and Arsenal are said to waiting in the wings but it is surely too early for him to move on from St James’ Park.
After all, it is only in recent weeks that Pérez has convinced Steve McClaren to offer him a regular place in the starting lineup and it is no coincidence his renaissance has come in the wake of the Newcastle manager’s decision to relocate him from a wide role to a more central, although deep-lying, attacking position.
As adhesive as his close control is, as hard as Pérez is to dispossess, there is a real sense that his game could still benefit from quite a bit more of McClaren’s coaching. Admittedly he has scored a respectable 10 goals in 33 Premier League starts but it remains difficult to fathom precisely where he would fit into Manchester United’s starting XI. Spurs could potentially be a better fit and the suspicion is Mauricio Pochettino’s management would suit Pérez rather better than Louis van Gaal’s but, again, he would face a struggle to command a regular starting slot in north London.
The son of a hotel worker, he grew up in Santa Cruz, northern Tenerife, honing his repertoire of defence-stretching tricks beneath balmy Canary Island skies before joining his local club. After that it was not long before Newcastle’s former manager Alan Pardew received a tip-off about the youngster’s increasingly impressive performances for Tenerife in Spain’s second tier.
Pardew, like McClaren, had little say in the players Newcastle signed but Pérez was young, averaging a goal every two games and, at £1.5m, cheap, so, for once, the board gave the green light.
It was initially intended that the new boy would spend the first year on Tyneside honing his craft in Beardsley’s under-21 side – incidentally, conversations with Beardsley helped persuade Pérez to sign for Newcastle rather than one of a host of La Liga clubs, Barcelona and Real Madrid included, then hovering in the background – but things moved much faster than expected.
After Newcastle’s poor start to last season the forward was catapulted into the first team, where he proved a rare bright spark in a depressing campaign. Even so, as winter turned to spring and Pérez and Newcastle fought relegation under John Carver, he became so physically and mentally exhausted that burnout apparently beckoned. By then, though, he had done enough to get noticed in all the right places. City’s Silva, from the neighbouring island of Gran Canaria, offered enormous encouragement and Sir Alex Ferguson confided, over a drink with his old friend Pardew, that had he still been managing Manchester United he might well have been after the boy from Tenerife.
Wherever he ends up, Pérez needs to be deployed as a second striker or latter-day version of the inside forward. Not a centre-forward, not an orthodox midfielder and not a winger, he initially tended to be deployed on the right or left of the attacking midfield element of Newcastle’s 4-2-3-1 formation.
McClaren took time to be convinced that he offered sufficient end product to enhance the first team but, having shifted him to a more central attacking role in the hole behind Aleksandar Mitrovic, Newcastle’s manager could not be more delighted with his progress.
It will be no surprise if the Spain Under-21 player’s diligence off the ball as much as his elegance on it earns him a promotion to his country’s senior squad when international football resumes in March.
Flanked by Moussa Sissoko and Georginio Wijnaldum, Pérez appears eminently capable of lifting McClaren’s side into mid-table while also helping retain possession and exhilarating a Tyneside crowd who, craving entertainment, hanker for the old days under Kevin Keegan when Beardsley shimmied beneath the floodlights. At Old Trafford or White Hart Lane there would be the prospect of Champions League football but, stuck on the bench, Pérez could well regress.
If he wants a cautionary tale he need only turn his attentions down the road to Sunderland where Adam Johnson’s stint warming the padded seats in the Etihad Stadium’s dugout sent the winger’s once so promising career hurtling into reverse. Jack Rodwell, currently incapable of making Sam Allardyce’s first team, had a similar experience at Manchester City and is doing even worse.
Even Yohan Cabaye, an excellent midfielder and Newcastle’s former shining star, took a wrong turn when he joined Paris Saint-Germain and struggled to force his way into the starting XI. Cabaye is at Crystal Palace now and it is far from impossible to imagine Pérez leaving Newcastle for brighter lights in January before also ending up being grateful for a reunion with Pardew at Selhurst Park.
This is why Pérez, likable and, by all accounts, extremely sensible, has consistently claimed it is “too early” for him to leave Newcastle. Consequently the biggest danger is not necessarily Pérez’s head being turned but Mike Ashley being tempted by the chance of a quick profit. McClaren, with his team still not clear of relegation waters and dangerous forwards seemingly an endangered dressing-room species, can be expected to fight to keep a player he relishes coaching but everyone, especially at Newcastle, has their price.
Should Ashley, the club’s owner, offer the former England coach the extra centre-half, orthodox No9 and high-calibre central midfielder he craves in exchange for offloading a couple of saleable assets, Newcastle’s manager – who has to pick his battles – would face a dilemma and Pérez could conceivably be sacrificed.
If it came down to a choice between keeping the maddeningly inconsistent but, on his day, game-defining Sissoko or Pérez, the latter could well be deemed the more dispensable. McClaren, remember, has Siem de Jong, the former Ajax captain and a classic No10, finally fit again and desperate for deployment in the hole.
Ashley, though, does not sell cheaply. If Van Gaal or Pochettino really want the best creator to emerge from the Canaries since Silva they are likely to be asked for at least 10 times Newcastle’s original £1.5m outlay.
It promises to be an intriguing January at the court of St James’.
