The Keen & Judah Show: Jean-Ricner Bellegarde is in form... but what position should he play?

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Nathan and Judah and Liam Keen are on top of the world after Wolves snatch a point from Bournemouth at Vitality Stadium.

Transcript

00:00Welcome back to the second half. It is the Keenan Junior Show. Before the break, we had

00:09two on the way up, and that was Andre, the man of the match, and what a man of the match

00:12he was, Liam, and also Mateus Cunha. Matt Doherty on the way down, slightly harsh, but

00:18you can understand the reasons that we discussed. So, two more on the way up, and one man who

00:23came into the starting line, and we both predicted it, and that was someone who's been on fire

00:30and that is Jean-Ricne Bellegarde. Bang in form, Liam. However, he's done some of his

00:37best work in the centre of midfield, so when he plays in this game, you think, oh, where's

00:43he going to play? Is he going to play on that right wing? Is he going to hug that touchline,

00:47which is where we've seen him maybe have some more disappointing displays, and it was kind

00:51of a hybrid of both, and at the same time, it doesn't matter, because some of his best

00:56work was done on that right wing. He was excellent again, shepherded the ball very,

01:01very well, used it, pace, power, linked up well. He is full of confidence, and I tell

01:06you what, he deserves an apology from some people, Jean-Ricne Bellegarde, and maybe from

01:11us as well, because I was starting to worry about whether Jean-Ricne Bellegarde was a

01:16consistent Premier League player week in, week out, and he is in brilliant form at this

01:20moment in time. I think along with Cunha, I gave him an eight out of ten, could have

01:24been a nine, full of confidence, and this is a player, and really a bit of a surprise

01:29player from nowhere, because a few of us had written him off as someone maybe who we're

01:34going to see more from the substitutes bench going forward.

01:36Yeah, he had been written off by a lot of sections, and to be honest, kind of rightly

01:42so, to some degree, because he'd had enough time in Walshshire to show something, and

01:48hadn't really shown a lot. He'd had the odd game, or the odd half here and there, where

01:53he's clearly a player with talent, and it just wasn't, not everything was coming together

01:57at the right time, which sometimes you need a little bit of luck to make that happen,

02:02but equally, there's lots of things that the player can control that he needed to improve

02:06on, and it wasn't quite happening. But we sat here last week on the Keenan-Judas show

02:10and said it's amazing what confidence can do for a footballer, how the mind can impact

02:16a performance, and Bellegarde is in his best form, most consistent form of his Wolves career

02:22by some distance, and I find it really interesting that on a couple of those occasions, Bournemouth,

02:30and also when he came on at half-time against Liverpool for most of that second half, that

02:34has come on the right-hand side, because this resurgence in form came against Villa in the

02:39sentiment field, which continued against Blackburn, and he was fantastic, and we saw all the reasons

02:43why Vito Pereira took that chance in the first place to play him there, and then persevered

02:50with that opportunity for him. And you do worry when you move a player from one position

02:54to another, even though we never thought of him as a sentiment fielder in the first place,

02:58and you move him back over to the right, that sort of confidence or that form or that ability

03:04and belief in himself is going to wane, and he's going to struggle to get back to that

03:09same form again, and he's only continued, he's only kicked on further, which I think

03:14is testament to the player. We talk about things that the player can control with his

03:18performance to make sure everything comes together, and that is something he can control,

03:24and straightaway he's been able to do it. So that's a testament to him, and he's now

03:29become a player that, with other players maybe not quite taking their opportunities of late,

03:34that has to start in this team, and I don't think either of us would have thought we would

03:38be saying that about Jean-René Bellegard this season. So credit to the player, and

03:41credit to the manager for being able to get it out of him.

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