Birmingham City boss Lee Bowyer has admitted he would love to see Fulham winger Harry Wilson play for the Blues as he spoke to Birmingham Live, after seeing the 24-year-old impress at St Andrew's last night.
The Welsh international was instrumental in Fulham's comfortable 4-1 victory in the East Midlands, grabbing the assist for the Cottagers' opener and adding a goal himself to make it 3-0 in the 54th minute, all but putting the tie to bed early on in the second half.
Yesterday evening was a continuation of a great start to the campaign for Wilson, recovering from his straight red card against Huddersfield Town last month and grabbing a goal and/or an assist in all but one of his four Championship appearances for Marco Silva's side so far this season, recording three goals and two assists.
After arriving at Craven Cottage from Liverpool in a £12m deal in the summer and securing 19 goal contributions in 37 second-tier displays for Cardiff City last term, this form comes as no surprise, but he's settled in even better than expected and will look to continue contributing in the same fashion throughout the 2021/22 campaign.
The west London side recovered well from their 1-0 defeat to Blackpool at the weekend and will now be hoping this thumping at St Andrew's will give them the platform to achieve automatic promotion back to the top flight.
Birmingham manager Lee Bowyer thinks they will get there but saved a special word for Wilson, saying to Birmingham Live: "They spent £12million on Harry Wilson. Twelve million? Premiership clubs spend that and we are in the Championship. He is a proper player.
"For sure he is a Premier League player, I just said to him after the game ‘Stop scoring against my team’.
"He has played here twice and scored four goals. And he should have scored another one as well by the way. He is a good player, a very good player.
"So intelligent, his brain is just way, way in front, he sees things happening, he has got pictures in his head all the time. A very good player. I wouldn’t mind borrowing him for a little bit. Do you reckon they will loan him to us?"
The Verdict:
You would think Marco Silva would be keen on keeping Wilson at Craven Cottage - but if you don't ask, you don't get - so you can't blame Bowyer for the tongue-in-cheek request at the end of that interview!
Having him and Tahith Chong on either wing would be superb for the West Midlands side with Troy Deeney up top, but it's the sort of thing that could only happen in FIFA career mode at this moment in time, because he will be the man to lead Fulham to the Premier League.
The partnership he and Serbian forward Aleksandar Mitrovic will strike up throughout the campaign will just be too much for other second-tier sides to handle in the end, barring a major drop in performance levels from the duo or other Fulham players.
You also can't argue with Lee Bowyer's assessment of Wilson being a Premier League player. Although he failed to register a single assist in his 31 top-flight appearances for Bournemouth during the 2019/20 campaign, he did score an impressive seven goals and many people would back him to improve on this record if he received another chance.
With more domestic and international experience under his belt since then, there's no excuse for the 24-year-old not to match or improve his goalscoring contributions tally.