5 players looking to rejuvenate their careers in 2018/19

While some players found their reputations greatly enhanced due to their performances in 2017/18 – think Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane or Kevin de Bruyne – plenty of others saw their stock slip somewhat due to them having a season to forget.

Some players will be looking to rejuvenate their stalled careers in 2018/19, whether that’s at a new club, at their current club with a new manager, or simply because they’ve now had more time to settle in. Here are 5 of them.

#1 Jack Wilshere

His move to West Ham represents a new beginning for Jack Wilshere

At one point in 2017/18 – around the Christmas period and then into early 2018 – it looked like Jack Wilshere’s career at Arsenal was back on track. Plagued by injuries for basically the whole of his time at the Emirates since he burst onto the scene as a teenage prodigy in 2008, Wilshere had spent 2016/17 on loan at Bournemouth and his Arsenal career seemed to be coming to an end.

But an injury to Aaron Ramsey gave him a chance and for a handful of games – against the likes of Newcastle, Crystal Palace, and Chelsea – it appeared that he was back to his best. Unfortunately, a knee injury during March’s international break and a subsequent loss of form put that idea to bed, and when Unai Emery was announced as the Gunners’ new manager, the news soon came out that there would be no new contract for the attacking midfielder who had come up through the ranks.

After missing out on a World Cup place with England, Wilshere signed with West Ham on July 9th, and 2018/19 represents a real chance for him to rejuvenate his career. He’s playing under a new manager – Manuel Pellegrini – who likes to play attractive football, and for all intents and purposes, he should be one of the Hammers’ key players this season as they look to progress and push up the table.

Given how long he’s been around, it’s easy to forget that Wilshere is still just 26 years old – hypothetically, he’s in his prime. If he can keep himself injury free and return to the spark of form he showed at the turn of the year, he could still be one of the Premier League’s most outstanding performers.

#2 Lucas Moura

Lucas Moura should finally be settled at Tottenham - and will look to hit form in 2018/19

For Brazilian winger Lucas Moura, 2017/18 was a disappointing season, but also one that probably offered him renewed hope. Frozen out at Paris St. Germain at the start of the season, from August to January the Brazilian winger only appeared in six games for PSG and completed a grand total of 80 minutes action. The January transfer window saw Tottenham offer Lucas a lifeline, and the move made a lot of sense given their financial restrictions – he was signed for a cut-price £25m.

Unfortunately, the move to Spurs hasn’t worked out quite as well as Lucas would’ve hoped. He struggled to establish himself in Mauricio Pochettino’s first team and only made 11 appearances with his new club, many of them from the substitute’s bench. He did show flashes of his potential, though – his performance against Rochdale in the FA Cup was fantastic, as was his showing on the final day of the season against Leicester.

What that suggests is that far from being a flop signing, Lucas has simply taken a longer time to embed himself into Tottenham’s way of playing. It makes sense given his lack of activity at PSG during the first half of the season – as well as the fact that Pochettino’s heavy pressing style is difficult for a player to acclimatize to right away.

Tottenham fans might be disappointed right now that their club hasn’t made much movement into the transfer market this summer – Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish seems like the only likely signing at this moment – but they shouldn’t forget that in Lucas, they have a player who should finally be fully embedded and raring to go and rejuvenate himself in 2018/19.

#3 Michael Keane

Michael Keane will be looking to rediscover his old form under new boss Marco Silva

Flashback to the start of 2017/18 for a second. Michael Keane was coming off the best season of his young career; he’d been an ever-present for Burnley in 2016/17 and had earned rave reviews, he’d broken into the England set-up and looked like a shoo-in for a World Cup spot, and he’d just made a big money move that appeared to make sense, as he signed for Everton for a fee of £25m.

Unfortunately, the centre-back didn’t see things go to plan during his first season at Goodison Park. He was expected to form a formidable partnership with Wales international Ashley Williams, but Williams somehow aged overnight and became incredibly shaky, and his loss of form seemed to rub off on Keane, who began to look error-prone as Everton slid down the table.

The firing of Ronald Koeman and subsequent appointment of Sam Allardyce steadied Everton’s ship and allowed them to finish in a respectable 8th position, but Allardyce’s no-nonsense playing style didn’t really mesh well with Keane’s cultured style of defending, even if he did improve in form as the season went on.

2018/19 though could be very different for Keane. Everton now have a new – and more progressive – boss in Marco Silva, and judging from pre-season it looks like his go-to partnership in central defence could be Keane and England youngster Mason Holgate. Silva’s slicker style of playing should suit Keane far more than Allardyce’s did, and if he can return to the form he showed at Burnley, there’s no reason why he can’t force himself back into the England squad too.

#4 Alvaro Morata

If he stays at Chelsea, Alvaro Morata could bounce back to form in 2018/19

Despite current reports linking him with a move away from Stamford Bridge – swap deals with AC Milan or Juventus, with either Gianluigi Donnarumma or Gonzalo Higuain heading to Chelsea have been rumoured – as of writing, Spanish striker Alvaro Morata is still a Chelsea player. The big question is then; can he rebuild his career with the Blues under new boss Maurizio Sarri?

It’s a tricky one. Morata started 2017/18 on fire, scoring goals for fun – including a hat-trick in September – and by December he’d already scored 10 Premier League goals for his new club. The fans seemed to love him too, dedicating chants to him to taunt Tottenham fans. But a sending off in an FA Cup game against Norwich in January for dissent seemed to mark a turning point, and from there, his form tailed off badly.

Morata scored just one more league goal in 2018, finishing the season with a disappointing return of 11, and many Chelsea fans suggested they’d have been better off sticking with Belgian striker Michy Batshuayi as their first choice hitman instead. But realistically, Morata wasn’t the only Chelsea player to fade from form as the season went on – most of the squad struggled as boss Antonio Conte clearly lost the faith of his dressing room.

Under Sarri though – the man who helped the likes of Higuain and Dries Mertens to hit arguably the best form of their careers – there’s no reason why Morata can’t rebuild his Chelsea career and consistently deliver the goals they expected when he first came onto the scene in the summer of 2017. Whether he stays or goes, though, 2018/19 is his big chance to kickstart his career again.

#5 Lewis Baker

Lewis Baker will look to rebound from his disappointing spell at Middlesbrough with his move to Leeds

While Chelsea’s much talked about loan system has worked brilliantly for some players – Thibaut Courtois, Andreas Christensen and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, for instance, have all benefited from seasons away from Stamford Bridge – England youngster Lewis Baker represents what can go wrong perhaps better than anyone else. An outstanding member of England’s youth sides, Baker won the Golden Boot as the U21 side won 2016’s Toulon Tournament, and he performed well in last summer’s U21 European Championship too.

After two seasons on loan at Vitesse Arnhem – where he hit fantastic form and proved his worth as a possible future star – 2017/18 was supposed to be the season where Baker really kicked on and proved that he could make it at Chelsea. He moved on loan to Middlesbrough for the season but somehow fell out of favour with both Garry Monk and then Tony Pulis, despite showing flashes of his massive potential on the odd occasion that he did appear.

In the end, Baker only made 12 appearances in the Championship, many as a substitute. The move simply didn’t work and essentially was a year of his career wasted. At 23 years old he’s probably further from Chelsea’s first-team squad than ever before. But the talent – he’s two-footed, can play practically anywhere in midfield, has an eye for a pass and is a dead-ball expert – is clearly there.

That’s why 2018/19 is so important to him. He’s taken another Championship loan move, but this time he’s at Leeds United, under legendary Argentine boss Marcelo Bielsa – the man who helped to develop players like Gabriel Batistuta and who was once labelled the world’s greatest coach by Pep Guardiola. If Baker can find his feet under Bielsa then the sky is the limit, and he could yet make his mark at Chelsea – and possibly with England, too.