Elanga showed plenty of 'flair' and Finesse in the youth games. The issue is he hasn't been able to translate that to the mens game yet.
Clearly confidence is the biggest issue as he keeps it very robotic when playing at the moment.
Yeah, and I think this is part of the reason for why we often go on about how we should not 'rush' kids. Take that shot against Arsenal that hit the post. If that goes in he is our big hero for a little while and who knows what it does to his confidence. Now its really low. He is fumbling, losing possession and so forth.
In addition, I have always felt that especially his mentality would be a better fit deeper in the field. Like imagine if he was a RB, he would work his arse of every night. I do have a bit of a hard time seeing him working out under ETH. But with that said, I do think that he is a little thrown under the buss by our fan base. I saw someone go like 'he seems to be a good kid, but if you actually knew football, you can see that he should never have been given a chance to start with and that we should have dumped him a long time ago' -- but the thing is, we are now on our 3rd coach that is playing this kid in the Premier League. Nobody more than Ragnick, but Ole (IIRC) used him and of course ETH, who have used him quite a lot. Is it due to lack of alternatives? Like sure, but we have started with really good players on the bench and Elanga on the field.
Even if he doesn't have a future here -- there is a lot of football in the kid. I think he is a classic example of a kid that is underrated by the fans due to appearance more than actual substance. The kid who comes on and makes two great plays when he has the ball besides being invisible for 90 will always get rated higher than another kid who comes on and makes a positive impact on the game but also fumbles a couple of plays.
Lastly, I also think these kids from smaller nations can be helped pretty much by being supported by the national team besides the club. He had that great stint for Chelsea, but after that he has struggled a lot on the clubs he has been on. Didn't even make Chelsea's training team in the summer. But he always played for Scotland. They rate him really high. In today's football world, with the science, players should be better when they are 22 compared to when they were 20, they should be better when they are 24 than 22, and so forth.