Many Southampton fans will be hoping that we’ve seen the last of Sofiane Boufal at St Mary’s Stadium as despite having clear talent, and having shown flashes of brilliance, his end product, consistency and attitude has long been in question.
Following his arrival for a reported £16million transfer fee from Lille back in 2016, he’s only ever achieved 29 starting appearances for us, with 30 showings from the bench, and in that time he scored four times. Having fallen out with former manager Mark Hughes, spending time in our Under 23 setup for training purposes we shipped him out over the summer to Celta Vigo, and it’s not unfair to say the spell hasn’t been great on a productivity front either.
18 league appearances, eight substitute showings with a grand return of two goals and two assists according to statistics website Whoscored but they have got him down as having an average rating of 6.97. Not great, but certainly could be worse. With some vague Eden Hazard references doing the rounds about the Moroccan 25-year-old, he’s certainly not that though.
He definitely caused a stir in their last match against Real Madrid on Saturday though, as Celta Vigo were bearing down on goal, his attempted pass was sliced straight into the hands of the opposition goalkeeper.
Any club Boufal goes will always be struggling for survival in their respective leagues.
Southampton was struggling for survival when he was there, now it's happening to Celta.
— Olajide (@vanMubsyn) March 16, 2019
Boufal, strangely, was Celta's best and worst player for the 70 minutes he was on the field.
— Robbie Dunne (@robbiejdunne) March 16, 2019
na man boufal needs to go back to Championship football. hes brain dead.
— ????YJR⚽️ ???? #EV2020. (@TheSocaWarrior) March 16, 2019
Now I’ve seen why Celta vigo are 17th..what was that boufal?????????? #RealMadridCelta
— Padre (@Ihedoro_I) March 16, 2019
Just horrible!
— Thiago (@BCNThiago) March 16, 2019
Boufal shouldn’t be paid for a week
— Kekeli (@kellskill) March 16, 2019
Boufal with the worst, honestly the worst pass I've seen all my life. Like somebody else controls his foot.
— Alex Truica (@AlexTruica) March 16, 2019
Lmao wtf was that boufal????????????????
U-5 kids would have done better than that.— Rohit Kumar (@old_monk9) March 16, 2019
Some did support him over the incident and it would be wrong to judge based on an isolated moment, but given his overall return it looks like manager Ralph Hasenhuttl will have the opportunity to see if he can get the best from him next summer.
