It was not a bad start at all for Mbaye Diagne at West Bromwich Albion.
Just 45 minutes on the field, only seven touches, but an assist, two chances created and a key role in a second-half transformation in the 2-2 home draw against Fulham.
It is early days in Diagne’s loan at The Hawthorns, but in an eye-catching debut, the Senegal international striker offered hope that he may just repay the faith Albion have shown in a player who is no stranger to controversy.
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Sam Allardyce will no doubt be aware of Diagne’s chequered past, such is the access to information on the modern grapevine of football recruitment.
The 29-year-old has represented 13 clubs in eight different countries since leaving Senegal as a child, often making his mark on the field and memorably off it.
He is loved in Senegal, disliked in Bruges and remembered everywhere he has been.
It is clear Diagne is a player who arrives with an element of risk. But with just 18 games to play for Albion when he arrived late on Friday, he seems a potential game-changer worth the punt.
“Diagne is a young Senegalese who left for Italy very early on,” says Mahmoud Gueye, a Senegalese journalist with Taggat SN.
“He had gone to join a member of his family. He had trials in Italy then joined Division Four teams. After strong performances he caught the eye of the recruiters of Juventus in Turin and was signed for the reserve team.”
Having made his mark at Brandizzo and Bra in the lower reaches, it was on Antonio Conte’s watch at Juventus that he joined the ‘Old Lady’.
He never made the first team but gained experience on loan in France with Ajaccio, Belgium with Lierse and Westerlo, Saudi Arabia with Al Shabab and Hungary with Ujpest.
In 2016 he finally left Juventus to join Tianjin TEDA in the Chinese Super League.
Two years later he was back in Europe with Kasimpasa and a year later he moved again, this time just a few miles across Istanbul to Galatasaray.
Diagne’s career has been an itinerant one but his goals record has been impressive at every stop along the way.
“There are some lads who travel really well,” said Allardyce, having watched Diagne tee up Albion’s second goal on Saturday for Matheus Pereira. “I’ve seen that many times over many years now. They want to play football and they will go where they need to play.
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“He has come to us to play in the Premier League because he wants to impress everybody with how good he is. Even though he’s with a great club in Galatasaray he really wants to show everybody in the Premier League what he can do.
“If he keeps us up, hopefully he can stay here.”
A clue to the reasons for Diagne’s regular moves might come, perhaps, from his turbulent spell back in Belgium with Brugge. His loan move from Galatasaray in September 2019 started with controversy and went from bad to worse.
Diagne flew into Belgium with Anderlecht so convinced they had a deal in place to sign him they sent a car to the airport to collect him. Yet Diagne had decided en route to accept a rival offer from Brugge and hopped into their airport transit instead.
There was surprise at his official unveiling when Diagne reportedly asked for the printing on the back of his shirt, which originally read ‘M. Diagne’ to be changed to ‘M. Jr Diagne’, prompting a 40-minute drive for a member of staff from the training complex to the stadium shop for a replacement.
There was an alleged refusal to complete post-match drills with fellow substitutes following a game at Mouscron that angered manager Philippe Clement and then, most famously, an incident in a Champions League tie against Paris Saint-Germain that effectively spelled the end of his spell in Brugge.
With his team 1-0 down and awarded a penalty with 15 minutes remaining, Diagne claimed the ball and took the spot-kick ahead of appointed taker Hans Vanaken.
Almost inevitably, he missed from the spot, sparking angry scenes in the dressing room.
Then came an unapproved trip back to Istanbul when Brugge played Galatasaray, his parent club. Brugge had wanted Diagne to stay in Belgium for the game, which he was unable to take part in.
There were other incidents, too, leading to Diagne’s exile from the first-team squad and eventual return to Galatasaray, but not before the Turkish club had threatened to go to FIFA to have Brugge sanctioned for lowering the value of their player by refusing to use him.
Back in Turkey, though, came a flurry of goals.
Diagne had scored enough in the second half of the 2018-19 season to help Galatasaray to the Turkish title, but this season he has truly hit his stride.
Nine goals in 15 games for Galatasaray meant clubs across Europe were again taking notice. There were rough edges and missing ingredients to Diagne but his goalscoring ability could not be doubted.
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The dynamics of his game are shown clearly by his profile on Smarterscout — a system that uses advanced metric data to produce an overall score between 0-99 for individual strengths.
Diagne is a finisher and keen to shoot at goal, as shown by his shot volume of 91 out of 99. His strong “xG from shot creation” (80 out of 99) means that his actions contribute highly to his team getting chances.
His assist for Pereira on his Albion debut was something of a surprise given he only registered one league assist after joining Galatasaray in 2018.
His lack of involvement in build-up play is further shown by his low volume of progressive passing (13 out of 99) and xG from ball progression (38 out of 99).
For Albion, the pool of potential loan signings was small. So while they are undoubtedly aware of what Diagne does not do (and the problems he has encountered in the past) they focused instead on what he could do.
On Saturday they got their first small reward, having welcomed him into the team hotel as late as 11pm on Friday.
“He’s a brave man,” says Allardyce. “Not only with the cold and the snow but also with the position that we’re in. He obviously fancies the Premier League.
“We saw the kind of player we didn’t have here. We saw the goals he’s scored as well as his play outside the box and he can mess centre-halves around.
“We saw that in the short time he was involved and he hasn’t even caught up with the pace of the Premier League yet.
“We hope he can do that quickly and we can get him involved more and more. If we play the right way to him he could be a big asset.
“The only instructions we had time to give him were on corners and free-kicks, defending and attacking-wise. The rest of it was ‘just go out and play the way you play for Galatasaray’, and we told the lads to play up to him and off him as much as they could.”
Back in Senegal, with whom he has won ten caps, interest in his move to Albion will be strong.
“He is well appreciated in Senegal and he is very generous, he helps the needy a lot,” says Gueye. “At the start of COVID-19, he gave a lot to families in Senegal and did live instagrams with his fans to keep them company during this difficult period. He recently repaired the primary school in his neighbourhood.”
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The school rebuild in Hlm, a region of Dakar, cost Diagne an estimated £22,000.
He also arranged for a truck to deliver supplies of rice, oil, sugar and facemasks to the public in his homeland to help in the midst of the pandemic.
So the man who has made his share of enemies in his incident-packed career has an army of friends, too.
Keeping Albion in the Premier League against the odds would be a notable addition to his packed CV.
(Main image: Diagne on his debut against Fulham; inset the school he helped rebuild in Hlm, Dakar. Photos: Getty Images and Mahmoud Gueye/Taggat SN)