Football League World
·6 June 2023
Football League World
·6 June 2023
Burnley's romp to the Championship title last season is likely going to see them as a potential good landing spot for plenty of players this summer, although head coach Vincent Kompany will not want to disrupt the dressing room morale too much by signing too many individuals.
They will have to strengthen in a number of positions though with loanees heading back to their parent clubs, with an area that needs looking into being the wide areas of attack, as well as through the middle.
And per a tweet from South American reporter Cesar Luis Merlo of TyC Sports, the Clarets are in the running for 22-year-old Ecuadorian international winger Gonzalo Plata, along with next season's Premier League rivals AFC Bournemouth.
Plata was born in Ecuador and spent time in the youth systems of both LDU Quito and Independiente del Valle before turning professional with the latter.
After playing just 13 times for them as a teenager, Plata made the move to Europe when Portuguese giants Sporting CP snapped him up in January 2019, but he had to wait until the following season for his senior debut where he played 24 times in all competitions in his first full campaign with the club, scoring three goals.
Having fallen out of favour in 2020-21 though, playing in just 14 matches, Plata was loaned out to Real Valladolid of Spain for the 2021-22 season and played a big part in helping them to win promotion back to La Liga with six goals and five assists in 30 league outings.
That led to a permanent switch to Valladolid last summer but having failed to help the club stay in the top flight of Spanish football despite contributing with a singular goal and seven assists, Plata is expected to depart in the coming months.
Plata seems very much in the Manuel Benson mould - he is a quick, left-footed forward who predominantly plays on the right flank and likes to cut inside onto his stronger foot.
However, Plata perhaps doesn't possess the striking abilities that Benson does, having scored only once in La Liga throughout the whole of the most recent campaign.
His seven assists though are promising and he's a fully-fledged Ecuador international with 33 caps to his name, playing in every single minute of their 2022 FIFA World Cup campaign earlier on in the season.
At the age of 22, Plata still has room to develop into an even better player and he would fit Burnley's current transfer model of investing in players under the age of 24 for their first-team, so you'd have to say he's a good player to be targeting.