If you occasionally find yourself pining for the days of the FA Carling Premiership — a time when Nintendo, Northern Rock and Harcros Building Supplies were advertised pitchside, VAR was merely a pipe dream and “low blocks” weren’t part of the footballing vernacular — Brian Brobbey’s display against Crystal Palace on Saturday might well have been right up your street.
Simply put, it was a throwback to an era during which strikers gave as good as they got, where they took their licks but kept coming
back for more, and where brute strength and determination often won out.
In the first instance, it’s important to highlight that after an understandably low-key start to his Sunderland career, Brobbey has been looking better and better with every game he’s played, and the contempt with which he treated the ball as he lashed it past Vicario at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was that of a player whose desire to prove himself in English football is as strong as the force contained within his thigh muscles and his boots.
Here’s a talented footballer given a chance by Sunderland after experiencing some turbulent times at Ajax, and boy, is he determined to make the most of it.
We’d already seen glimpses of what Brobbey could do if given a chance.
After setting up Chemsdine Talbi’s winner against Chelsea, there was a dramatic equaliser against Arsenal, a fine header against Bournemouth and of course that goal against Spurs, but as a complete performance, this was about as impressive as it gets and given the praise that was lavished on Brobbey and Sunderland’s signing of him by former Tottenham manager Martin Jol, it can only draw more positive attention and ensure that his confidence continues to soar.
Against Palace, Brobbey was an absolute force of nature.
He bullied the visiting defence mercilessly, refused to be cowed in the face of little protection from referee Rob Jones, and completed the Sunderland comeback with a sublime finish over Dean Henderson. He was on the receiving end of plenty of rough stuff from the visiting defenders as they struggled to deal with his threat, but he kept coming back for more — the sign of a centre forward who’s certainly up for the fight.
Purists may cry foul and it’s fair to say that his confrontational approach would be sniffed at by many coaches, but in an era during which we often expect strikers to combine silky skills, dead-eye accuracy in front of goal and statistics that keep the analysts happy, there’s something brutally effective and undeniably captivating about Brobbey’s style of play, and this was highlighted to devastating effect against the Eagles.
Cricket writer Simon Barnes once said of legendary Australian batsman Steve Waugh that he “wanted to defeat you personally” and in Brobbey’s on-pitch body language, his “no backwards steps” mentality and his fiery competitiveness, I see a striker who relishes every physical duel and every ounce of needle, and for whom getting the better of an opposing defender is a matter of real pride.
With that in mind, is Brobbey channelling the trauma of his personal strife and using it as a source of motivation every time he steps out onto the pitch?
Given what he went through and the frankly appalling troubles he endured during his latter days in Amsterdam, you could understand why he’s perhaps being driven by an almost primitive sense of rage, a burning desire to make up for any lost time and to show that the Eredivisie — itself the subject of all manner of cracks about average strikers — does in fact produce centre forwards whose game can be fine-tuned in order to suit the demands of the Premier League.
One thing is for sure: his popularity among the Sunderland fanbase is growing and it’s easy to see why Régis Le Bris has placed so much trust in him as our first-choice striker. Wilson Isidor remains a superb alternative but at the moment — and with players picked on merit — Brobbey is our spearhead and it’ll take some effort to prise that number nine shirt from his muscular torso.
We’ve always loved abrasive players who give as good as they get and in this young Dutch marksman, we seem to have signed a centre forward who combines supreme physical attributes with an eye for goal that’s starting to pay dividends on a more frequent basis.
He’s clearly working very hard. He’s operating in an environment in which players who reach and maintain certain standards will always find favour — and he’s giving seasoned Premier League defenders a hell of a battle every time he lines up in a red and white shirt.
Furthermore, if the goals (and in this case, the strike that sealed victory for the Lads) continue to come, the arguments about the need for Sunderland to sign a “genuine goalscoring striker” will also be rendered moot, and that’ll be no mean feat.
Let’s keep showing him the love — and hopefully he’ll continue to deliver!
