Tea Light in the Dark Universe: Bobby Wood at Hamburg

Can people not count? He scored 9 goals. The same as McBride in his first year at Fulham, at a much younger age.

When Dempsey blew up at Fulham, everyone counted his cup goals. So why are some people not doing that here?

 

HSV is asking Bobby to pay him more money. That's what matters at this point.

Clearly he is no Lewandowski and has some apparent holes in his game, but to call him one of the club's bottlenecks this season is somewhat ludicrous, unless you're referring to his late-season knee issues. This is a team that fired its coach, kicked 3 CBs off the team midseason (including the incumbent captain!) and went through a revolving door in DM. In terms of creating offense, they put up with Hunt and Holtby oscillating between bad to somewhat palatable and enjoyed the services of the least efficient winger in the league (Kostic).

If you point to the 5 league goals in claiming that Wood is not a useful Bundesliga player, you might be ignoring the obvious visual evidence presented when he went up against an otherwise competent international-caliber defender like Höwedes and Vestergaard and cooked their ass. He creates matchup problems for opponents.

 

Reportedly could sign new contract to run until 2021. Salary of about €3 million with €12 million release clause.
http://www.mopo.de/sport/hsv/fast-a...obby-wood-vor-vertragsverlaengerung--26949562

 

But the GOALS!!! Where are the GOALS!!!! (as a general rule, I'll suggest that teams that reup players and give them raises do not think they are one of their biggest problems... Now, can HSV be out of their minds - there is much evidence to support that, actually, but I'm gonna go with "not in this case." Bobby has indicated that he can be reasonably useful at Hamburg level.)

I really hope HSV at least puts together a midfielder or two who understand and are capable of exploiting how Woods plays - and not just in the "push every ball to him and hope" style. If they had a guy who could better alternate between a 10 and Shadow Striker role, they'd get a bit of use out of the space Wood creates. Having 3 or 4 other middies who can pass would help as well. But ultimately, HSV's 60 some GA are just as damaging as their 33 GF, both are pushing the "bottom" of their respective lists. They need help in all segments of the field.

 

Get that $$$$$

50-55 K euros a week. anyone have an idea of how that wage stands at the club?

 

There definitely are holes in his game, but he is, as you guys put it "ornery" by temperment and has a prodigious appetite for the muck-and-bullets aspects of the game. Whatever his limitations, if his markers aren't "up for it" he will give them a torrid time (if Brooks could get an injection of Bobby's attitude, he'd be playing for Real or Barcelona).

A lot (but by no means all) of his game reminds me of how Herc Gomez described his own game: “I’m like a ********ing cockroach. I just keep going and going and going.” He's a real nuisance to have playing against you, but the kind of guy fans and especially team-mates warm to.

There was a moment after full-time against Schalke (the last-but-one game) when the HSV players were in a huddle, in front of their away fans, I think. Bobby was clearly unhappy, probably blaming himself for the narrowly missed half-chance that would have won them the game and sealed BL1 status for another season. Papadopolous was hugging Bobby and giving him some words of encouragement, and finished off by kissing him on the top of his head. That guy is a warrior rather than a technical player; an awesome competitor who is not exactly shy about letting team-mates know when they've screwed up. If he blamed Bobby he'd have ignored him

 

Thats quite the salary if true

 

9 goals is not terrible. He was injured and fought through it. Now they are committed to Bobby and hopefully find complimentary midfielders, and perhaps even a strike partner.

 

i believe the highest earning Yank in Europe was Dempsey when he moved to Spurs. Something like 60 K pounds a week. 5 years ago.

 

even though 2 of them were against a 3 Bundesliga club, they were still quality strikes.

 

Top 3 earners at least. Probably the highest earner.

People tend to see continental wages through EPL-tinted glasses, and tend to think that, OK, overall BL/Serie A wages haven't kept up, but the big clubs have, and team X is a big club in that country, so at their stars are getting EPL wages. PSG, Bayern, Real and Barca apart, they're not or desperately struggling to do that.

Which is why the Premier League speculation will continue. If he moves to anywhere in the EPL, he'll be on 5-7 million Euros a week. The German clubs that can actually afford that kind of money are Bayern (natch), Dortmund, Leipzig, Schalke and Hoffenheim, and maybe Bayer Levekusen; only the first three could afford both his wages and the transfer fee.

 

Wow. That's about 350m Euros a year. Bobby would be getting paid 8X what Messi gets.

 

Obviously that should have been 5-7 million a year. My bad.

FWIW, it comes from the UK's way of calculating player's pay. Football was and is a working class sport. Historically, one of main the dividing lines between classes of employees was that the working classes (blue-collar workers in American English) were assumed to not have savings or assets to drawn on/monteize on for more than a few days, so they were paid at the end of the week (often in cash at the workplace), which is called a wage.

The UK still uses that way of calculating and comparing players' incomes, and the Irish are raised on the EPL, which is why my blooper happened.

That, and the fact that I've just turned . . . Oh, never mind !!!

 

Which was before the Brexit stuff so before the sharp fall of the pound, though down from the $2.10 when I was paying uni tuition. Still, that was ~ $100k a week. Given the euro today, 50k is something like $52k a week these days.
For a club that isn't Bmunch, that's a very nice wage in the Bund, and reflects that they see more than five goals a season in his future.
It is worth noting that beyond all other issues, Wood was in his first year in the Bund, first year with a new club. There is an adjustment time for these things.

 

Yea but will he be able to afford a Mercedes G Class now?

 

paying cash?

 

Bund is the second highest paying league on average and that's without their new tv deal kicking in which will see quite an increase in spending power.

 

It's surprising how, for all the money they spend, the lot of them can only beat Bayern a couple of times per season.

 

Bayern spends twice as much as BVB, who is the second highest spender.

 

I admire when hard work is rewarded.

 

1860 Munich update: they were just relegated to the 3. Liga at the feet of Regensburg and Jann George (who started and went 67 minutes). In the 82 minute, the players had to leave the field because the lovely Sechszig fans were throwing things onto the field. They started back up after about 15 minutes. It is finished now, and Regensburg won 2-0, 3-1 on aggregate

File Under: Schadenfreude
cc: @freisland

Edit: just read on the ticker at Kicker that the U 21, U 19, U17 and U 16 teams were also relegated this season. Ouch.

 

Thank God Bobby jumped/was pushed off a sinking ship.

 

It actually kind of bums me out, since it was nice for a minute in back around 2000 or whenever they last had a decent run in the B1 for Bayern not to be the only game in town, but the fans and management have been such jerks I can't cry too hard...

Much of it seems self-inflicted.

 

From an outsider, looking at the amount of Bundesliga and other talent talent they produced, it looks like a pretty terribly run club. IIRC, their former captain who came up from the youth ranks scored the pk that just sent Huddersfield to the Premier League.

 

You do recall correctly. This is Christopher Schindler's comment in a pre-Wembley interview:

“It is totally different here. In Munich we had so many different styles because we had so many different bosses, coaches and so on. It was unbelievable. Everybody tried their best and wanted success but when you have so many coaches with so many different players who are brought in, it’s hard to get that union on the pitch. That was the problem we had.
“Everybody tried their best but we were not a team. My whole time as a professional there we had that frustration and supporters were upset because at the start of every year we thought: ‘Now we will change things,’ but it got worse. Here, at Huddersfield, we are really a team.”
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...n-not-easy-huddersfield-christopher-schindler
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Allegedly they've averaged two coaches a season over the past decade. This season, they went through four coaches, if you count the two different caretakers they promoted from the ranks to sup from the poisoned chalice. According to Transfermarkt it was six - yes, 6 - last season, and three the year before. 2010-11 was the last time they had one coach for the entire season.