Paul Onuachu‘s relentless scoring streak continued in the Super Lig this weekend, as the towering Super Eagles striker netted again for Trabzonspor to serve another reminder that Victor Osimhen isn’t the only Nigerian tearing it up in Turkey.
The towering, 6ft7in Onuachu is enjoying his best form for four years, as he continues his career rebuild at Trabzonspor after an unrewarding spell at Southampton, and leads the Super Lig’s scoring chart.
While he’d scored 15 across 21 league games on loan at Trabzonspor in 23-24, few anticipated the impact that Onuachu would have this season, particularly given he suffered injury almost immediately upon arriving back in Turkiye, and given he missed a sizeable chunk of the campaign due to Africa Cup of Nations participation.
However, the striker’s impact this term has been remarkable. He set the tone for Trabzonspor 2.0 with a winner on his debut against Kocaelispor in mid-August, and has rarely stopped scoring in the subsequent months.
His goal against Rizespor on Saturday — a close-range finish following Oleksandr Zubkov‘s clipped cut-back — was his 21st league goal of the season, putting him five goals clear at the top of the top flight’s scoring charts, despite having started four matches and played 389 minutes fewer than his nearest rival, Eldor Shomurodov of Istanbul Basaksehir.
It settled an emotional contest for Trabzonspor following the death, earlier in the week, of assistant head coach and former player Orhan Kaynak, with Onuachu celebrating with a kit bearing the former forward’s name.
You have to go back to the AFCON bronze medal match between Nigeria and Egypt in Casablanca, way back on January 17, to find the last game in which Onuachu didn’t score, with the forward bagging 10 league goals over the intervening two months.
The fact he’s done so across eight Super Lig matches has been all the more remarkable. Coupled with his form in Turkey’s premier cup competition — where he has two goals in two matches since the AFCON — Onuachu’s run has been astonishing, with 12 goals in 10 outings since Morocco.
Onauchu’s run means he becomes the first player in 14 years — since Burak Yilmaz in 2012 — to have scored in 10 consecutive matches for the Turkish giants, while already becoming Trabzonspor’s top scorer in a single season since 2011.
He could yet end the year with silverware, with Trabzonspor currently seven points behind league leaders Galatasaray with eight matches to play, and in the quarterfinals of the Turkish Cup.
The Southampton slump
The powerful frontman struggled in English football, having signed for the Saints from Genk in an initial £18m deal on deadline day in February 2023. At the time, he was in the process of establishing himself as one of the most lethal frontmen in Europe outside the big five leagues.
He’d netted 70 league goals across his previous two and a half years in the Belgian Pro League, hitting a career-high 33 in 2020-21 before ultimately treading the well-walked path to English football when he was charged with inspiring Nathan Jones’ troubled Southampton side from beating the drop.
The south-coast club were bottom with 15 points but still in touching distance of safety when Onuachu signed up, but the forward wholly struggled to adapt to the English game, ending the campaign without netting across 11 Premier League appearances.
Perhaps it was inevitable.
Saints were disorganised and uninspired, while Onuachu, unfamiliar with the level, unfamiliar with the league, not seeing much of the ball, failed to shine in a team low on confidence and staring at relegation for most of the campaign.
He’d struggled to see out games in Belgium, suggesting issues with his fitness and conditioning, and in the frantic furious Premier League, the frontman was unable to assert himself when given the opportunity.
There had been some logic, at least, with James Ward-Prowse‘s lethal set-piece ability and Onuachu’s aerial prowess theoretically giving Southampton an effective Plan B.
It wasn’t to be, even though the West African had clearly demonstrated in Belgium that he knew how to find the net.
After regaining form on loan at Trabzonspor in 23-24, evading Southampton’s Championship campaign, Onuachu returned for a second shot at the top tier. Again, wrong place, wrong time.
Southampton had been a fluid ball-playing team in the Championship under Russell Martin, and Onuachu, while not one-dimensional as he has been characterised at times, didn’t find his place.
Four goals in 25 PL outings was a poor return, and Saints soon tumbled back into the second tier. A return to Turkey for Tall Paul seemed like the wise move, with Onuachu returning to joining a sizeable Nigerian contingent in the Super Lig.
It’s testament to his non-impact in England that none of the clubs in the bottom half of the Prem, any of whom could have feasibly been interested in a towering ‘Plan B’, considered the forward despite his appealing £6m price tag.
While some Southampton fans would recognise that Onuachu was horribly mismanaged by a serious of underwhelming coaches during his time on the south coast, others may suggest that the forward’s change in fortunes in Turkey is testament to the lesser quality of the Super Lig.
Onuachu isn’t buying it.
“There’s no easy game in this league,” he told journalists after the match, as per Hurriyet.
“Every game is hard. We have to give our opponents credit, they fought well. We’ll keep fighting.
“We want to continue to win with the help of our head coach and the technical team.”
Where to next for Tall Paul?
Should he win the Golden Boot, the 31-year-old would become only the sixth Trabzonspor player in history to have been named Turkey’s top scorer, and the first since Alexander Sorloth in 2020, when the Norwegian bagged 24 in 24 outings.
While Onuachu could feasibly eclipse Shota Arveladze as Trabzonspor’s top scoring foreign player in a single season – the Georgia international scored 25 in the 95-96 season – he may struggle to outgun Yilmaz, whose 33-goal haul in 11-12 remains a club record.
Mbaye Diagne, of Senegal, is the top scoring foreign Golden Boot winner in the league’s history, after scoring 30 in 27 for Kasimpasa and Galatasaray in 2018-19, while Onuachu appears set to follow in the footsteps of last year’s winner, Victor Osimhen, and complete a Nigerian back-to-back triumph in the goal charts.
Onuachu has finally found an environment which he can thrive, and a team which, unlike Southampton, is geared to his strengths.
Unlike Saints, Trabzonspor utilise dangerous wide players who aren’t afraid to cross into the box, their relative dominance domestically and proactive style ensures there are sufficient second balls for the striker to latch onto, with Onuachu in general required to less tracking, pressing and defensive work.
The result is that he’s now registered 40 percent of Trabzonspor’s goals this season — no player has contributed a higher percentage for their team in the division — while becoming the club’s third highest scoring foreigner of all time, behind Arveladze and teammate Anthony Nwakaeme.
Don’t expect Onuachu to get another shot in a major European league. At 31, this is likely to be the last peak year of his career, but the veteran striker is at least proving, in Turkey, that he wasn’t just a one-hit wonder following his earlier career successes in Belgium.
A move to Saudi Arabia, or potentially to a Champions League qualifier outside the big five leagues, appears a more likely prospect for the gentle giant this offseason.
