Player Profile: Southampton target Cenk Tosun
By Josh Kingdom
After Southampton’s goalscoring woes this season, a player I would like to see lining up at St Mary’s Stadium is striker Cenk Tosun.
The Saints have scored just 41 goals in the Premier League this season, which averages to 1.07 goals per game, only six teams are worse in the rest of the league and we are without a goal at home in our last six home games. In short, we need a new striker!
Cenk Tosun was born in the German city of Waltzar on the 7th June 1991, 68 kilometers away from Frankfurt where he would start his footballing career with the U17s.
After making just two appearances with the U17s he moved up to the U19s at the start of the 2009/10, and it was at this level that his career really kicked off, Scoring 20 goals in his 40 appearances and amassing a minute per goal ratio of 1 in 158.3.
Tosun made his breakthrough to the first-team at the start of the 2009/10 season, where he made seventeen appearances for the reserves (Frankfurt II) but just the one for the Starting XI. Despite only making an exiguous amount of appearances, his fourteen goal involvement in one and a half seasons catching the eye of Turkish outfit Gaziantepspor where he moved in the 2010/11 winter transfer window for a fee just shy of half a million euros.
He was an instant success with the Falcons, making 14 appearances and being involved in 16 of the teams 44 goals and helping them to achieve a fourth place Super Lig finish, placing them in the Europa League qualifying places for the 2011/12 season.
In the next two seasons and 106 appearances he spent with the club, scoring 34 more goals and getting 16 more assists before being moved on to Turkish giants, Besiktas.
At the beginning of the 2014/15 season, Tosun made the twelve hour journey across the country to join up with his new team. From then until now, the Center-Forward has made 116 appearances for the Kara Kartallar and been involved in 29% of the teams 195 goals, scoring 48 of them.
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On October 15 2013, Tosun made his debut for the Turkish national team, despite playing for Germany until U21 level. In his 18 caps, Tosun has scored 5 goals, his most recent coming in a friendly against Finland in March.
Arguably, one of the most influential figures in the Strikers career is Besiktas manager, Şenol Güneş. Upon his arrival at the Siyah Beyazlılar, Tosun had scored just nine goals, however under Güneş a change of formation and tactics has seen Cenk take that number up to 28. The 64 year-old changed the 4-4-2 diamond formation to a 4-2-3-1 and it has payed dividends.
It’s for this reason I feel that Tosun would fit in at Saints as Claude Puel has used a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-5-1 in 17 out of the last eighteen games in the Premier League. This formation helps to get the most out of your striker as at times you can have up to six players up field at any one point, with full-backs pushing up and holding midfielders dropping into their place.
Verdict:
I feel that Tosun’s goal scoring and goal involvement is high enough and also with knowledge of the system it will be easier for him to adapt to our style of play, with players such as Manolo Gabbiadini not used to the 4-5-1 style.