We will see. Costa has played in 14 games for us, taken 25 shots and scored twice. (IIRC one was from run of play and one from a deflected free kick? ) In any case so far he has scored 1 goal every 400 minutes (actual: 2 goals in 806 min). Well maybe it is just his current injury that is slowing him down. Let's look at his last 5 years of play and see if we can see evidence for that. Here is Costa's scoring over the last 5 years, spanning 2017-2022: So over the last 5 years, across all competitions, Costa has scored a total of 13 goals. That means that over a five year sample he has averaged 2.6 goals per year. Of course he missed/skipped a lot of games over those years so the fairest way to assess his abilities is to look at goals per 90 minutes. He comes in at a whopping 0.16 goals per 90 minutes played. That means 1 goal every 6 full games played. How would that look over a season? Lets assume he played 30 games, averaging 80 mins per game (LOL!), so a 2400 minute season: that translates into a whopping 4 goals per season! The fact that the "brain" trust of Klein, Kirovski and Vanney looked at Costa's history (did they even bother?) and still decided to award him one of our 2 multi-million dollar senior DP contracts is nothing short of mind boggling. The Costa signing alone should be a fireable offense, for all three of them. My god, how dumb are these people? So I'm going to stick with "good at almost scoring" until proven wrong.
Your presumption requires that he play with the same circumstances that he has since 2016 which is playing with a massive amount of lingering injuries. And my presumption requires that his return to health not be a fluke. Since 2016 this is a guy that has had multiple major injuries. From Hamstrings in 2016 and 2017 Then add Calf and Ankles to that in 2018 and 2019 Then in 2020 he jacked his bicep and,... From 2021 he had an abductor muscles injury and has been basically playing on a broken foot that never properly healed for about a year. According to Vanney this dude should now FINALLY be 100%; and as I said before you would have thought that they would have learned their lesson in signing guys that carry nagging injuries over years yet here we are again. That being said in the short amount of time he has played he has an over 80% passer rating and he scored the 2 goals and earned an assist. He'd have more if not for the likes of Cabral and Efrain blowing wide open shots. We will see indeed. He has a chance to make a comeback but he absolutely must keep his legs.
I find it hard to believe he has been constantly injured for 5 years of play. But I hope like hell you and Vanney are right and he surprises the hell out of me. I do think he has played a bit better in his last couple outings so there is a tiny bit of hope that this "new healthy Costa" is a changed man. But my hope doesn't mean a lot - I'm the sucker who keeps kicking at the football Lucy is holding.
It's sadly true. This dude in not going to be a Beckham/Zlatan/CR7 type whose body will allow them to play top class at dang near 40. That being said keep hope alive.