Said Benrahma: Is he ready for Chelsea or Arsenal?

If you believe the news media and the wider blogosphere, it appears that Algeria international Said Benrahma is already nailed-on to star in the Premier League next season.

A comment by Tondela’s Fahd Moufi on the player’s Instagram Live video on Thursday seemed to confirm a deal is in place for the winger to move to Chelsea this summer. Of course, this hardly works as a definitive confirmation, but perhaps the most interesting part of it all is that it does not seem far-fetched in the least.

Since the resumption of football, the 24-year-old has appeared to exist in a perpetual state of grace. His five goals and one assist in five games have kept Brentford in the hunt for automatic promotion from the Championship. Against Wigan Athletic a week ago, he struck his second hat-trick of the season; only Sergio Aguero has managed more.

It would be a mistake to gloss over that treble against the Latics though, as it is relevant beyond a tenuous relationship with Manchester City’s dead-eye Argentine assassin. So, going back to it, it can be surmised that each strike was instructive of the abilities Benrahma possesses at his best: the first: spatial wareness; the second: a capacity for flair and the absurd; the third: instinctive play around the box.

Then there are the dribbles: only Ovie Ejaria and Ebere Eze average more successful dribbles per game in the Championship than Benrahma’s 2.9.

There is an impish bent to his ability to beat a man that has left many a Championship right-back looking very foolish. There is a repertoire of nutmegs and elaborate drag-backs, powerful runs down the outside and step-overs. His rainbow flick over Bristol City’s Adam Nagy on New Year’s Day was a moment of pure genius – filth, as the kids say – and epitomizes his penchant to enjoy himself a little bit at the opponent’s expense.

The real trick for this magician has been marrying that elusiveness – “He’s such a tricky player, you think you’ve got him locked in the corner and then, all of a sudden, he’s out,” team mate Henrik Dalsgaard attests – with actual end product, and his form since the turn of the year certainly suggests something has turned. Of his 15 goals so far this season, 12 have come in 2020.

The obvious question is how these attributes and output would translate at a higher level. Aside the Chelsea link, he has also reportedly attracted the likes of Arsenal and Leicester City, all top eight Premier League sides. Would that be a jump too far?

Well, here is a theory.

Perhaps the reason players can often struggle when moving from top-level Championship sides to bottom-half Premier League clubs is that the circumstances are so different. You go from being a part of a dominant team in one division to scrapping in another, and that culture shock can lead to underperformance.

It may simply be that having the same level of expectation makes adaptation easier.

A case in point is Jarrod Bowen, who signed for West Ham from struggling Hull City in the January window. He has since integrated seamlessly into a Hammers’ squad facing the same challenges as the Tigers were in the Championship (where he excelled), and that has made it even easier for him to meet their peculiar demands. The same goes for James Maddison (Norwich to Leicester), but at the other end of the table and scale of expectation.

Brentford under Thomas Frank play a very attacking, front-foot style, and so a move to one of the Premier League’s leading lights would require more a physical step-up (his technical level is already too high for the Championship as is) than a mental one.

It is a facet of his game he already has experience refining: when he first moved to Brentford from Nice, he struggled with the sheer speed of football in England, and by his own admission it took him two months to adapt. However, adapt he did, and there is no reason he should not be able to do it again.

Then again, the question might not even arise at all. As part of Brentford’s vaunted “BMW” frontline (along with Bryan Mbuemo and league top scorer Ollie Watkins), Benrahma is powering the Bees’ push for a place in the Premier League next season.

It would certainly make for a great story for the club that has eschewed most traditional models and ideas – they famously shut down their academy in 2016 – and sought to find its own path through innovative scouting and targeting players released by bigger clubs.

If they make it, he would have a choice to make: stick with the fairytale, or leverage his growing profile for a move to the big time.

Playing a year in the Premier League in familiar surroundings would obviously make it even easier for him to get used to the pace of it all, but the ball would definitely be in his court and at his feet. For Benrahma, there is no happier scenario than precisely that.