Totally. I've never drunk the EPB Kool-Aid so I'm not his biggest fan but anyone reading anything into his situation until the end of the month needs to lie down and chill. Give him time.
He has been. On top of being under contract at serial playoff participants, he got a half-season on loan at one of the best clubs in one of Europe's best development leagues. He was on loan at one of the Eredivisie's worst defences which was crying out for reinforcements (a little like what Miazga did at Reading last season) but couldn't nail down a stating slot. Those are good good club situations. Really. What people mean by good situations seems to boil down to "the coach didn't give him PT" (like a certain fanboy who had the hots for Juan Agudelo - and Julian Green - and never stopped blaming the former's descent into mediocrity and/or petty-mindedness of coaches blind to his Brony's unique genius. The fact is that PT isn't given to any player: not Messi, not Pele, not Cryuff, not DiStefano. They take it from someone else, who either takes it back, moves on to another club to take it from someone else, or retires. EPB has had opportunities. He hasn't taken them. Sometimes - not very often, but sometimes - it really is that simple. This is one of those sometimes.
Respectfully, I think it generally is the case that talent rises to the appropriate level so I think it is that simple way more often than not.
Austria Wien has had a terrible start to the season. Lost their first two league matches, giving up three goals in each. Fortunately, they turned it around this last weekend with a 5-1 away win. Austria Wien also lost the home leg of the Europa League series with Apollon Limassol of Cyprus by a score of 1-2. Second leg is this Thursday, so there's a real chance EPB may not even get a chance to play in European competition at all.
I mean the start of my paragraph literally said "Sometimes a guy just isn't good enough". But if you want to highlight one line and go from there... I don't think EPB is good enough but not getting regular playing time probably played into it. Players aren't just automatically good/bad. There's a little more nuance. For someone at a position like CB, you need to gain experience and play a lot. He just hasn't played a ton of matches. He made his MLS debut in 2014 and has played about 80 first team matches in 5 years. That's not enough. Disagree going to a huge club and being loaned out constantly is ever a good situation for the player. The whole thing with him has always seemed off to me. The moves made. The timing of the moves. Maybe he wasn't ever that good -- and that is a huge possibility. Maybe he peaked at 18 which happens too. If you can't cut it at NAC Breda, you're a USL level player really. But it's impossible to say that the mismanagement of his career didn't effect him.
And Erik's name is spelled wrong, the capitalization is terrible, it's too long. This has completely ruined my Monday night.
am I late to the party? I was going to suggest a combination of mispronunciation and misspelling; You Wien some, you loose some: EPB at Austria Wien