Primary Position – Centre-Forward

Other position(s) – None

Last season’s form – Games 31 / 15 goals 1 assist

Born in Ilorin, Nigeria in August 1997, Awoniyi signed for Liverpool in 2015 for a fee of £400,000 from the Imperial Soccer Academy. He was loaned out to German club FSV Frankfurt the same season and then loaned out to Dutch club NEC the following campaign. He only scored three goals over 31 appearances in these two loan spells.

Awoniyi was loaned out again in July 2017, this time to Belgian club Royal Excel Mouscron where he fared better, scoring on his debut and notching seven goals in 27 appearances. He signed a new long-term deal with Liverpool the following season but was loaned out to Belgian club Gent and then to Mouscron again in January.

The August 2019 window saw Awoniyi loaned out to German club Mainz 05 where he scored just one goal in 12 appearances. His seventh loan spell saw him go to Union Berlin in September 2020 and the German club made his signing permanent the following season for a fee of £6.5 million. He scored five goals in 21 appearances in his first season at Berlin but improved the following year with 15 goals in 31 matches.

Awoniyi averaged a healthy 0.58 ‘Expected Goals’ (xG) per 90 for Berlin in his second season but only an ‘Expected Assist’ (xA) of 0.09 which would indicate he is very much a goal scorer rather than a creator. He averaged 2.73 shots per game and scored with 43% of his shots on target, a healthy average. His 20% shot conversion rate is also up there with many of the Premier League’s top strikers. With K. Davis departing after his loan spell, Awoniyi should see plenty of minutes as Forest’s main striker and should flourish playing alongside B. Johnson.

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