Bournemouth sold more than £200m worth of talent in the summer transfer window but have still improved this season.
After seven games, three of which were against Champions League sides, Andoni Iraola’s team are fourth in the Premier League table.
How can this be possible? The easiest way to answer that question is not to look at the players who left the club, but at the star man who remained: Antoine Semenyo.
The Bournemouth winger is unquestionably the best player at the Vitality Stadium, and on current form he might just be the best player in the entire division.
At this early stage of the season, Semenyo has already scored six goals and registered three assists in the Premier League. Only Erling Haaland has scored more goals, but the Manchester City striker has contributed just one assist.
As an all-round attacking force, Semenyo has stood alone in these first few weeks of the campaign.
It has been a staggeringly impressive few months for a player who once quit football altogether, and who not so long ago was battling in the lower leagues for Bath City and Newport County.
Semenyo is now a man in serious demand, and he is attracting interest from some of the biggest clubs in the country. There are important figures at Liverpool, for example, who believed he would have been the ideal signing for the club last summer.
What makes Semenyo such a devastating player? There are the obvious physical gifts – he is a hugely powerful runner, as he has demonstrated with lung-busting goals against Liverpool and Fulham – but also supreme technical skills.
Few players can match his remarkable two-footedness, with Semenyo capable of unleashing stinging shots with either foot.
His goals so far this season paint a picture: three have been scored with his left foot, and three with his right. He has also taken the same number of shots (eight) with both feet.
Semenyo’s father Larry, who played to a high level in Ghana, deserves the credit for this two-footedness. From an early age, Semenyo was encouraged to kick anything he could, including balls of paper and empty cans, with both feet.
By the age of six, Semenyo has said, he was comfortable on both sides.
“My first impression was ‘wow, this guy is blockbuster,’” says Saul Isaksson-Hurst, an individual skills coach who worked with Semenyo during the summer. “His ball-striking off both feet is right up there as one of the best I have seen.
“He has quite an unorthodox technique. He likes to strike the ball with an open foot, almost like a knuckleball, so he gets a lot of dip and movement. I know a lot of players who have a similar technique, but I don’t know anyone else who can do it off both feet with that consistency.
“He is a machine, and he is a machine with the ball. You can have all the athletic qualities but doing it with the ball, that is the real game changer. That is what sets him apart.”
There have been no smooth roads to the top for Semenyo, who never played in a Premier League academy and was frequently turned away by London’s top clubs as a teenager. He spent time at Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Crystal Palace, Charlton Athletic and Millwall, but none of them kept him on. Millwall said no on five separate occasions.
It was rejection by Palace, at the age of 15, that finally broke the young Semenyo’s spirit. He stepped away from football for an entire year before he was invited to an open trial at Bisham Abbey.
He subsequently met Dave Hockaday, formerly the manager of Forest Green Rovers and Leeds United, who convinced him to move to college in Swindon. From there, he was picked up by Bristol City.
Of the switch from London to Swindon, at the age of 16, Semenyo told the Earn Your Stripes YouTube channel: “I went off the radar. None of my friends knew I had moved. I knew I wanted to be a footballer so I knew I had to make that sacrifice, to be away from my friends.”
Semenyo was loaned to Bath City and then Newport, where manager Michael Flynn converted him from a central striker into a winger. “I love him,” Flynn tells Telegraph Sport. “He is so humble, his manners are impeccable. He is a real credit to his family. He came in with a smile on his face every day, which is so important – especially with players on loan.
“I watched him for five minutes at 18 and that was enough. He was powerful, quick. Left foot, right foot. Because both of his feet were so good, he could go down the wing and put a cross in, or he could cut inside. And he was so strong.
There were times when big League Two players were trying to bully him, and they just couldn’t get near him. He had that raw strength.
“I remember telling a few big clubs that they should sign him. I also did the same with Ben White [the Arsenal defender, who spent the 2017-18 season at Newport]. I don’t do that with many players, but those two were exceptional. It comes from their upbringing and their work ethic.”
Semenyo spent only half a season with Newport before he was recalled by Bristol City, amid serious interest from Chelsea. “I was devastated,” says Flynn.
The move to Chelsea failed to materialise, but other Premier League clubs were watching closely, and Bournemouth eventually completed a deal in January 2023. They paid about £10m for Semenyo, who by then had become a Ghana international.
Semenyo has since improved with each campaign, scoring eight goals in his first full Premier League season and then 11 last year. Under Iraola’s excellent coaching, he is on course to comfortably smash that total this season.
And if he continues to perform at this level, there can be no doubt that the phone will soon ring again. Some of the country’s biggest clubs rejected Semenyo a decade ago, but all of them would love to have him now.--AOL
