Nykommer Callum Lang hadde tre mål på 29 kamper for Wigan denne sesongen før overgangen til Pompey. Nå står Lang med fire mål på sju kamper for Pompey.
NYHETER: Lang kom med et godt omdømme og forventninger om å levere fra dag én, men det gjorde også Anthony Scully og Gavin Whyte i sommer. De to sistnevnte har ikke levert.
Lang kom inn som innbytter borte mot Oxford i sin debut, og han scoret etter få minutter. Pompey tok ledelsen 2-1 med Langs scoring og jublingen sammen med Pompey-fansen ga han en skikkelig kickstart i Pompey-drakten. Dessverre utlignet Oxford på overtid, men Lang hadde uansett vist seg fram.
Etter det har Lang fått mye tillit av hovedtrener John Mousinho. Pompey har brukt ham først og fremst i en tierrolle bak Colby Bishop. Der har Lang levert veldig bra og han står som nevnt med fire seriemål på sju kamper.
Mousinho forteller til lokalavisa The News at Callum Langs prestasjoner i Pompey-drakt har overgått hans forventninger. Pompey-treneren tror måten 25-åringen har fått operere i tierrollen er nøkkelen til hans suksessfulle start for Pompey.
SE OGSÅ: Callum Langs spillerprofil
John Mousinhos kommentarer
«We possibly didn’t expect Callum’s return to be quite this good, but signing him was a no-brainer. Callum has flexibility across the front line. We don’t play him as an out-and-out 10, he’s a very different 10 to what we’ve played previously this season, compared to Myles Peart-Harris, Alex Robertson and Christian Saydee.
With any of the players, the only thing we focus on is their strengths – and trying to get them to impose their strengths on the game. It’s about having Callum in goal-scoring positions and we feel he’ll get into more goal-scoring positions being slightly more central.
His impact is exactly why we brought him to this football club. We know he’s done it at this level before, he’s scored plenty of goals, and won promotion with Wigan. We signed a player who had already played quite a few minutes this season, he hadn’t been out injured, and, while there were a few issues towards the back end at Wigan, nothing we couldn’t overcome with a couple of training sessions.
Callum hit the ground running physically, while it helped coming on at Oxford and having an immediate impact. It really boosts confidence. You go from the Oxford game into the Northampton game and he scores again, so all of those things have helped him settle really quickly.
Taking Myles and Alex as number 10 examples, they drop in far deeper and try to get much more involved in the build-up, whereas Callum stays away and certainly tries to have an impact at the top end of the pitch. If you look at his goal-scoring record, that probably tells you everything you need to know about where he arrives in the box and how good his finishing is. He has affected games in that 10 role, although can play on the left being a bit more narrow and plenty of people have also seen him have success as a right midfielder or right winger.
‘I do like Callum when he’s a bit more central and close to the goal. I wouldn’t see him as an out-and-out chalk-on-your-boots winger.»
Det er verdt å merke seg at da Wigan vant League One og rykket opp til Championship i 2021/22, scoret Lang 18 mål.
