With Antoine Semenyo set to be confirmed as a Bournemouth player, there is already a growing misconception around him, which is, to a degree, perhaps symbolic of his career at Bristol City.
Those of a Cherries persuasion with a loose interest in the Championship have indulged in a very quick equation of: 125 games, 21 goals, equalling - how can he be considered as a viable striker prospect in the Premier League.
It’s perfectly understandable but overlooks the nuance and details of Semenyo’s time in the professional game which haven’t been straightforward, all the way back to when he was being plucked from SGS College’s football programme when he was 17.
Semenyo’s route to the top-flight has not been a common one, and nor has his progress over the last six years in a red shirt. Before he had even played a game for his adopted hometown club, he was the subject of significant - at least for a largely untried teenager - bids from Chelsea.
Thrust into the first-team set-up under Lee Johnson, first as a substitute at Preston North End and then, surprisingly, granted a home debut in what was a crunch promotion clash against Leeds United.
Amidst the buzz of facing Bielsa’s side, with Kalvin Phillips dominant in midfield, Pablo Hernandez and Patrick Bamford in attack, Semenyo looked every inch the teenage prospect not quite in-tune with the pace of the professional game but there were glimpses, flickers and moments of the player he would eventually become.
The way his first touch was able to bring the ball quickly into his stride, and how he used his core strength to roll opposition players, opening up the pitch in front of him. It didn’t last long and, in truth, wasn’t that memorable as he was replaced after 58 minutes with City losing 1-0.
Six weeks later, and with one solitary other appearance to his name, away at Sheffield Wednesday, he was introduced for an injured Nathan Baker in another marquee match-up against Derby County at Ashton Gate. He lasted until the end but his second outing at BS3 was curtailed in injury time as he launched into a rash lunge on Tom Huddlestone to earn a red card and a three-match ban that ran into the following season.
The great transfer outlay of the summer of 2019 then led to Semenyo becoming something of a forgotten face. Ultimately, with Johnson’s requirements being on securing top six football that campaign, there was little time for sustained experimentation or to swallow the inconsistencies of youth.
As the saying goes, young talent may not cost you pounds, but they do points. With pressure and expectation fixed on a play-off challenge, it was a gamble to give Semenyo sustained minutes - for him, the team and the club as a whole.
There was an infamous 18 minutes against Reading whereby he was barracked by what seemed the whole of the Dolman Stand for what appeared a dereliction of duty in not following his man. In reality, his instructions from the bench were to mind someone else in blue and white hoops.
When asked about that moment and Semenyo’s progress, Johnson pretty much hit the nail on the head when he said: “When he hasn't got to think, he's outstanding. What we've got to remember is, yes, he's a physical presence and he's a big lad but, at the moment, at times he's been caught in the headlights.
"And that's not due to a lack of application, that's due to a lack of understanding and we're actually starting probably two or three years behind a normal academy player that will come through this football club.
"He hasn't had the coaching, like someone like Bobby Reid, who joined us very late. The tactical side of Antoine's game needs improving and that's fine, that's our job as coaches.”
From a talent and ability point of view, he was very much of the standard but significant maturity was required in his game understanding. There was also a feeling that the club hadn’t decided what his position was, and was ultimately shunted out to the right, slightly out of harm’s way but also able, theoretically anyway, to make an impact if he was fed the ball.
A loan move was inevitable and Sunderland provided a big club environment with similar pressures of needing promotion but Phil Parkinson, like Johnson, couldn’t find a suitable position for him and his only start for the Black Cats was at Bristol Rovers in the last game before the pandemic caused the postponement of that campaign. In that match at the Memorial Stadium he operated as a sort of withdrawn No10, not dissimilar to Andi Weimann’s role over the last 18 months.
Returning to Bristol as Johnson was sacked and Dean Holden was installed, the considerably more modest recruitment of that summer opened fresh opportunities up for Semenyo and while not quite a “breakout season”, his 44 appearances were by far the most of his career and he could consider himself very much part of the Robins first-team squad.
Yet he was sparingly used in that central role, either through question marks over his positional discipline or because it was genuinely felt he was more impactful on the wing, with greater space to run at defenders. There were examples of that - a debut goal against Exeter City, a smart run and finish at Millwall, but they were exceptions, rather than a rule.
It’s also worth highlighting that during this time Semenyo’s character was very much the shy, retiring wallflower. Although part of the fabric of the club and totally familiar with his surroundings, whenever interviewed he was awkward; polite and friendly, always, but he had a verbal inhibition that you couldn’t escape drawing parallels with his performances on the field.
Whether Nigel Pearson has purposely been able to change him as a man, or it’s just been a natural progression and process of maturity, is an impossible question to answer, because it’s probably a bit of both. But what clearly, and slightly bizarrely, benefited Semenyo in his development was by not playing any football at all.
True to Johnson’s assessment two years earlier, the knee surgery he underwent and subsequent complications that delayed his return, allowed him to spend significant times studying and thinking about his game.
He now had a body of work, albeit inconsistent, in terms of first-team appearances and experience in a senior dressing room, plus the talent and attributes to be a top-level Championship performer, but needed to join the dots, whether that be his positioning on and off the ball, or when and where to make his runs.
There was a reason why, beyond it drawing his side level, he celebrated so vociferously when he stabbed home a close range finish at Hull City in December 2021 - that was precisely the sort of goal he had wanted to train his brain to fashion. It was a poacher’s finish that spoke of a true striker’s instinct.
Five games later, he mustered something considerably more exciting with a first-half performance at Craven Cottage that must rank among the great individual displays in a City shirt of recent times. Two outstanding goals against the best team in the division and a defence, three quarters of which are still playing regularly in the Premier League.
Pace and power, obviously, but there was confidence, finesse and a ferocious front foot style of attacking play that few individuals are capable of producing. There were several scouts present in west London that day, to watch Fabio Carvalho for the opponents; it was Semenyo who they all left talking about.
His devastating second half to last season, which included a rejected bid from Nottingham Forest, and eight goals and 12 assists in 24 games from Hull to its conclusion, showcased how he had arrived in the Championship and what an attacking asset City now possessed.
Beyond that though, Semenyo had married his offensive gifts with a relentless will to press. It’s a bit of a modern go-to word whenever anyone is bereft of something to say in terms of analysing a game or a team’s performance, but it’s also become such an intrinsic part of how team’s play now that you have to a truly special individual to get away with not doing it.
Semenyo barely lets defenders breathe in possession, his acceleration and will to win the ball back became as attractive an attribute as his impact in the penalty area. If not for his shin injury sustained while on international duty with Ghana, the Robins would unquestionably have fielded several transfer offers over the summer.
That reality has since been delayed with Bournemouth in the right place, right time, and with the right level of finance from America that Crystal Palace have been unable to muster, despite having lingered on bidding for him since those early days at SGS when he opted for the City academy over south London due to the pathway ahead of him.
As a footballer he’s not so much a completely different prospect, but he’s a refined version of the footballer Brian Tinnion and his staff, and Dave Hockaday and his team before them, believed he would become. There are rough edges, no doubt, but as the standards increase in the Premier League, so should his. He’s shown himself to be a “good student” - to brazenly steal a Johnsonism - and someone willing for self-development.
Returning to the concept of his character, it’s a very different Semenyo now to the boy who was first introduced into the senior environment. Charming, funny, insightful, honest and with an air of self-confidence that holds back from arrogance because, quite simply, he’s too nice a lad to indulge in such a thing.
The great entertainer
As posted by Chris Bessex on Twitter, “Gutted to lose Semenyo, you’ve got to say in the entertainment-less black tunnel of the last three or so years Antone has been like a flashlight that keeps you going. I hope nothing but the best for him ”.
He has been responsible for many of the moments that can be considered “highlights” amid the struggle. He is an admission fee player, who makes things happen - shrugging defenders off with ease, barrelling into the penalty area, or making that goal net bulge a little bit further than his peers given the ferocity of his shooting.
Which brings us onto the concept of regret. For many, that seems to be the fee. Certainly £9million plus unknown add-ons (varying from £1.5m to £3m depending on which outlet you believe and how much you want to batter the club), doesn’t match the levels of a Keane Lewis-Potter or a Nathan Collins, but a player is only worth what someone will pay.
City have had a timeline on his sale and, ultimately, throughout the reports of Celtic, Rangers, Brighton & Hove Albion and Crystal Palace, Bournemouth are the only team to have made an appropriate set of bids. They didn’t really have that much of a choice, or the time to try and drive it further once Palace showed that their hand was a pair of 2s.
No, the real regret is that the magical glow Semenyo has brought to the pitch, although in a more accurate sense it’s probably more of a fireball, it’s been in a team struggling and scrapping towards the foot of the table. His best has often been when City have been at their worst - the 6-2 defeat at Fulham emblematic of such.
He came into the world as a City player in a side competing for the play-offs, in showpiece matches against Leeds and Derby, but he leaves with the Robins 17th in the table. We’re, of course, ourselves now overlooking considerable nuance and detail about the last three years of change in BS3, but his ability and potential ceiling are such that it would have been better to have seen him at the head of a City attack gunning for the top, winning games of extreme consequence and importance.
His highlights reel deserves a backdrop of greater gravitas. But, then again, perhaps without that landscape of financial rebuilding and reconstruction, he wouldn't have been afforded the same opportunities.
He will, though, depart with pride and a degree of excitement at what he’ll be capable of in the Premier League although Bournemouth fans should perhaps heed previous history and that he’ll undoubtedly need some time to find his feet. It could even prove a new path that very much mirrors his time in the West Country but given the patience and understanding the Robins have shown, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t replicate his very best, this time in black and red. A regrettable sentence in itself.
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