Cyriel Dessers leaps to Taiwo Awoniyi's defence, blasts popular stats website

In what was a refreshing sight of Nigerians banding together in unity, Super Eagles star Cyriel Dessers publicly defended his compatriot Taiwo Awoniyi from criticism on Twitter.

Popular football stats outfit, Whoscored revealed Super Eagles striker Taiwo Awoniyi as the third most wasteful player in the German Bundesliga via a tweet on their official account but Dessers countered with his contrary opinion.

The tweet read "Only Robert Lewandowski (32) and Andre Silva (17) missed more clear-cut goalscoring opportunities than Taiwo Awoniyi (16) in the Bundesliga last season."

The stat came out in the wake of Taiwo Awoniyi getting strongly linked to a Premier League transfer with newly promoted Nottingham Forest reportedly interested in his services.

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Dessers responded few minutes after the tweet with his contrary opinion, defending Awoniyi and praising the 24-year-old striker's ability to create his own chances.

"I don’t really like this stat, because I think it’s a quality to create this much clear cut chances (for yourself) as a striker. So when you create more, it’s obvious you miss more," Dessers tweeted.

The 27-year-old striker then followed up with another tweet to buttress his point, "Or you should at least put in perspective with conversion rate or number of goals scored."

Both Dessers and Awoniyi are Nigerian international strikers who just had stellar campaigns with their respective European clubs.

Dessers ended the season with 21 goals in all competitions for Dutch club Feyenoord where he spent the last nine months on loan from his parent club, KRC Genk.

Awoniyi on the other hand scored 20 goals for Union Berlin in what was his best season so far and is now being linked with a big-money move to the Premier League.