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He scored the winning goal in last season's Europa League final and cost Tottenham Hotspur £50m, making him the second most expensive Welshman in history - second only to the great Gareth Bale.
So why, when Wales faced Belgium in a vital World Cup qualifier last month, was Brennan Johnson dropped?
On the face of it, the 24-year-old should be a figurehead for his country, a proven Premier League goalscorer in a squad where most players represent clubs in the second or third tiers. Yet Johnson finds himself out of favour.
With the likes of Mohammed Kudus, Xavi Simons and Wilson Odobert competing with him for a starting spot at Spurs, rotation is hardly a surprise.
But for Wales, Johnson would expect to be one of the first names on the team sheet - even if his performances have underwhelmed for some time.
It was still significant, then, when head coach Craig Bellamy relegated the former Nottingham Forest forward to the bench against Belgium.
Wales conclude their World Cup qualifying group with matches against Liechtenstein on Saturday and North Macedonia three days later, all but certain to be in the play-offs next March.
Whether they will be home or away for the semi-final is in the balance - as, it seems, is Johnson's place in the team.
To assess Johnson's career with Wales, it is instructive to start from the beginning.
He made his debut aged 19 in November 2020. Then, after missing out on the squad for the Covid-delayed Euro 2020 the following summer, it was not until the 2022 World Cup campaign that he really established himself in the senior set-up.
Just as Johnson's international career was taking off, the end was fast approaching for Bale, Wales' greatest player of all time.
"Brennan's had a lot of pressure and expectation," says former Wales striker Nathan Blake.
"I've been around people who were already labelling him the next messiah and I was like 'Stop putting that sort of pressure on the boy'. You have to let him develop into whatever he becomes.
"If he becomes the next Gareth Bale, great. But I always say, I don't want to see the next Gareth Bale, I want to see the first Brennan Johnson. Right? Because he's different to Gareth Bale. They're not the same person."
Bale was irreplaceable. As well as being Wales' record goalscorer and cap holder, Bale was a generational talent, a freak of nature, a magician who could change the course of a match all on his own. He was a one-off. As Bellamy says: "There's no next Gareth Bale."
Nobody expected Johnson - or any of his team-mates - to scale those same superhuman heights as Bale, but the former Real Madrid superstar's retirement in January 2023 created a void.
Brennan Johnson represented England at youth level but committed to Wales, for whom he qualifies via his Welsh mother
Wales had promising attacking players coming through in the form of Harry Wilson, David Brooks and others but, when Johnson joined Spurs for £50m less than eight months after Bale's departure, the scrutiny of his performances intensified.
While Wilson has thrived with the added responsibility and scored six goals in his 12 games under Bellamy, Johnson has the same tally from 40 caps.
Whether he has played in his favoured right wing position or as a centre-forward, Johnson has seemed lost; reluctant to take on opponents on some occasions, hesitant in shooting on others and often turning to play a safe pass backwards.
Former Wales captain Kath Morgan offered a blunt assessment after the Belgium defeat: "He's a £50m player allegedly but, I'm sorry, what is his contribution to Wales? This is now consistently happening."
Blake is also frustrated by his recent displays but strikes a more sympathetic tone.
"I think we just need to temper our expectations a bit," he says.
"Since he broke into the first team at Forest and to now at Spurs, I don't look at his game and say it's developed that much.
"But that's not the problem - the problem is people are expecting the next level and it's just not happened. I think that's what's really and truly eating Brennan, the expectation on him."
While the spectre of Bale is inescapable with Wales, Johnson had another impossible act to follow at Spurs, joining in the same transfer window in which Harry Kane left for Bayern Munich.
"He came in at quite a weird time for the club. I'm not sure they really had a good plan for how to replace Kane," says Jack Pitt-Brooke, who covers Tottenham for The Athletic.
"Johnson came in at a difficult moment but, with injuries to other players, he ended up playing tons that year and he was actually pretty good."
It helped that it was then-Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou who signed Johnson, who scored 23 goals in all competitions during his first two seasons.
"He fitted what Ange wanted from wingers," Pitt-Brooke adds. "Really high and wide, scoring goals where a winger goes down one side, pulls the ball back across the box, and the opposite side winger taps it in. Johnson was good at both delivering that cross, and also tapping it in at the far post."
Under Postecoglou, Spurs won the Europa League - with Johnson scoring the winner in the final against Manchester United - but the Australian was sacked this summer after the club finished 17th in the Premier League.
Thomas Frank replaced him - and the Dane replaced Johnson with Kudus.
"Frank wants to play a different way, and he wants his wingers to do a lot more on the ball than just score tap-ins," says Pitt-Brooke.
"Spurs paid £55m for Kudus, who doesn't score many goals, but everything until he gets to the opposition goal is much better than Johnson.
"At the moment, I don't think any Spurs fan would have Johnson in their first-choice team. It's not really clear where he fits."
Johnson has managed four goals in his 17 appearances in all competitions this season but, according to many supporters and pundits, does not offer much else.
"He doesn't really do a lot apart from scoring goals," says Pitt-Brooke. "There are obviously worse things to be than a guy who's just known for scoring goals, but I think people would probably have expected him to have done more.
"He's a bit of a mystery."
Brennan Johnson's goal in May's Europa League final ended Spurs' 17-year wait for a trophy
Johnson does not face the same competition for his place with Wales, which is why his benching against Belgium was so striking, despite his indifferent form.
Although he prefers to play on the right, Johnson has played up front, but Oxford United's Mark Harris - without a goal in 29 games for club and country - started as the centre-forward.
"That would have been a big punch in the solar plexus for Brennan," says Blake. "In a game of that magnitude."
Considering Wales needed to win to keep alive their hopes of qualifying automatically for the World Cup, this was a blunt message from Bellamy to Johnson, who only appeared as a substitute with half an hour to play.
When a rat made its way on to the pitch, Johnson was one of the players who tried to usher it off to the sidelines. Some Wales fans on social media joked that was his most telling contribution of the entire evening.
"He's not being selected by Spurs, he's not being selected for Wales, so there's a big question mark on how you come back after that," Blake adds.
"Regardless of what we say, it's only Brennan who can get back on track and shut any social media noise up, shut any fan noise up.
"Fans are not haters. They'll hate your guts for missing a chance but, a minute later, you score a goal, they absolutely adore you."
Johnson will get a chance to win over the sceptics at some stage during these final two games of Wales' World Cup qualifying group, particularly as their attacking options have been hit by striker Kieffer Moore's withdrawal through injury.
Yet as Bellamy demonstrated against Belgium only last month, no matter how important the game or how famous the player, nobody is sure of their place.
"I feel for the lad because it's not nice when the world is talking about you," says Blake.
"But it comes with the territory. He's got work to do."
