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Rondon buries Manchester United to continue upward trajectory

By on March 6, 2016

It would have been foolhardy to go shouting about promise and potential at the beginning of the season after a myriad of gloomy West Bromwich Albion defeats at the Hawthorns, but Tony Pulis’ men have slowly turned around their Premier League campaign and are quietly ramping up their form. In a frustrating season mired by Saido Berahino’s transfer saga and built upon a defensive, counter-attacking brand of Tony Pulis football, they’re in eleventh place in the Premier League with nine games to go after their impressive 1-0 victory over Manchester United. The Baggies are at thirty-nine points, only ten shy of their Premier League record, and they have now taken points off of four of the top five, with Manchester City looming on their schedule.

Now, optimism has taken The Hawthorns by the scruff of the neck following a 2-2 draw with league-leaders Leicester City and today’s win over United. As Venezuelan forward Salomón Rondón bagged the all-decisive goal, the crowd began to sing: “Who’s the best striker in the Premier League – it’s you Rondon-don, it’s you Rondon!”

The twenty-six-year-old scored his second in five days, his eighth this season, He has bagged four goals in his last six appearances, putting a rough beginning to his West Brom career well behind him. “King Salomón,” as the home crowd have lovingly dubbed him, is finally showing his prowess.

He cuts a powerful figure at 6’2” with a muscular build, but is also surprisingly agile for his size. His goal against Leicester was the perfect apotheosis of his skill set. He had the pace to beat Robert Huth to a through-ball in down the channel, the strength to muscle Huth off the ball and the composure to tuck a cool, first-time finish into the back of the net.

Against United, he found a pocket of space in a crowd and brought a driven cross down on a dime before shaping up for a finish on the half-volley. The goal earned him the Barclays man-of-the-match trophy and an increasing number of plaudits as he sets the league alight.

“He is a great lad with good ability. It has taken him time to settle in and he has had ups and downs but they love him here because of the work-rate and he is a wonderful kid. It was lovely to see him score and win us the game,” Pulis said of Rondón.
“At the start of the season before all the nonsense with Saido (Berahino) I was looking forward to seeing them together for the season but that has not happened. Since Saido has come back in they have looked really lively together and we look a threat.”

Inconsistency has always been Rondón’s achilles heel, but he is near unstoppable on form. Last season, he scored a goal every other game for Zenit Saint-Petersburg in the Russian Premier League and scored in the double-digits for five consecutive seasons between 2009 and 2014 with Las Palmas, Malaga, and Rubin Kazan.

He was managed by Manchester City gaffer Manuel Pellegrini at Malaga and the Italian said of the forward in 2012: “He’s a young man who likes to work hard. From the outset he’s always shown willingness to evolve and learn day after day. He’s still at that stage where he has a long way to go, but it is a privilege to have him in the team.”

Pulls spoke to Pellegrini and Andre Villas-Boas, who coached Rondón at Zenit, before personally phoning the forward and convincing him to sign at the Hawthorns.

Villas-Boas was reluctant to let Rondón go at all, but for Russia’s recent foreign-player limit squeezing him out of their squad.

“We had to give him away to deal with the limit,” the former Tottenham Hotspur boss seethed, per the Daily Mail. “The second highest scoring striker in the league last season is apparently not needed in Russia. Of course this is going to influence our level of play. Rondón is an excellent player and a great person, but we were forced to allow him to leave.”

Rondón is only the second-ever Venezuelan to play in the Premier League and is making huge strides representing both his country and his club. If possible, he’s becoming an even bigger presence up front for the Baggies.

Homepage photo credit: Viacheslav Evdokimov (fc-zenit.ru) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.