Tea Light in the Dark Universe: Bobby Wood at Hamburg

Told y'all. Bobby is awesome with the NT because of his commitment and will to win. But, as a player, he's barely BuLi quality. That's when you observe dispassionately.

 

Is entering??

Has already entered you mean . . .

 

he may be poor but i doubt he's barely. he had several good games last season. his Red card and his injuries kept him from upping his stats. not to mention his teammates

 

Not "poor." The Bundesliga is one of the five best leagues in the planet.

He's a decent player, just not good enough to carry a team like HSV, or even to be part of the solution in their lack of scoring problem. And worse when he has a nag.

 

The standard of defense in the bund is several levels above even the highest level of national team play, and leaves concacaf in the dust. Bobby is quite commited to the cause with HSV. It's a lot tougher to score there than against the shambolic mess that is a national side defense.

 

Yes, he's trying his best with his club too. He's just not good enough.

 

perhaps the club is not good enough. Not saying he's the best or 2nd or 3rd best. but he gives as much as he can.

 

maybe for like tnt or guatemala...but not WC level teams....an italy, brazil, etc etc defense is way harder to score on than any bundesliga team.

the goalscorer gets the credit but its the team that scores the goal. sometimes a player can singlehandedly score an unassisted goal (like bobby did last season a few times) but its a team sport.

thats why a player can score against tougher comp like copa america but struggle for a sunderland or hamburg to score....when their team isnt creating chances....some strikers arent gonna just create goals singlehandedly. thats not an indictment of that player....it shouldnt be.

a lot of it is luck too....

 

Nope, no way. Defense is all about organization, and organization takes time. National teams do not have time. Club teams do. National teams get together a bit, not a lot, for a year or two. Clubs stay together all the time.
Is the overall defensive talent of the German national team better than Hamburg's? Sure. But that doesn't matter. Club defenders go out every match knowing exactly what is expected of both their role and everyone on the field. National teams dumb it down and even then are winging it quite a bit.
The standard of play in a WC is lower than that in the big leagues, overall, but it's particularly true on defense.

 

the 2014 world cup final was scoreless after 90 minutes....do you honestly think either one of those teams (germany, argentina) wouldn't put up a crooked number of goals on any bundesliga team??

 

I heard a top CL club team is way better than the best WC team. We would never know for sure because there is a good chance some of the same players could be in both teams

 

he didnt say top cl team he said a bundesliga defense....the same league where timmy chandler is a standout but can't seem to get good enough for usmnt.

1 st place dortmund just gave up four goals to hannover.....

 

Would ANY striker be “good enough” for this club??

 

No. And that includes Lewandovski.

Strikers, especially No. 9s are heavily dependent on service, which comes from midfields and wingers/overlapping RBs & LBs. Even where those guys aren't necessarily very creative, if they're at least halfway competent and have a real willingness to fight, at least the mediocrity happens 10 metres closer to the opposition's goal. That alone makes a poorly-serviced CF's solo runs more likely to get into the box and in sight of goal, and has support when he runs into traffic.

That applies doubly when the striker, like Bobby, has a game that is not based on back-to-goal holdup play, or old-fashioned aerial ball.

I've lost count of the number of games where Bobby winds up forced out to the wing, usually on the right, and has two players on him with another hovering and nobody for him to at least lay the ball off to. Former Canuck Abroad-turned commentator Kevin McKenna was quite blunt about the difficulty of evaluating Bobby's abilties and limits when he has spent his entire BL1 career foraging alone and hunted down by a pack of opposition players.

 

Was at yesterday's game, the lady and I watched Bobby closely. A couple points:
His body language is spotty. He was quick to give a thumbs up to teammate's passes he couldn't quite get to, but was also quick to pout or throw his hands up when the passes didn't work the way he'd hoped.

He played mostly one touch, seemingly quicker than the rest of his team played. He didn't offer much hold up but won some 50/50s and knock downs. I'd imagine his pass % was fairly high.

He had one shot, blocked, he went down, looking for fouls that weren't called.

The kid that came in for him was instantly recognizable. He was quick, direct, has a very good dribble. He started and finished the only good move of the game. Bobby really does need to shape up in the coming months...

Oh, and saw Baby Klinnsman warming up. Even from 300 feet away he still strokes me as a little jerk. Would've been cool to have run into his dad though.

 

any bets when he might score again for Hamburg?

 

A friendly during the winter break.

 

Chandler works in the Bund because he knows exactly what is expected out of him. In this well defined role, he's a decent player. He's lost with the national team because the tactics are, essentially, go play defense with these guys.
Hamburg is a bad example because they're a bit of a mess, but even in the bund you can go fairly deep with teams that der Mannschaft cannot keep up with. All but the worst MLS clubs would toy with the USMNT.
If in, say, 2020, an MLS team signed the entire USMNT and management structure, and they played a full 2 seasons together heading in to Qatar, I think they'd win the thing, or be unlucky not to. they'd be the only actual team in the competition.

 

Or it could be that he doesn't put the same effort for the national team. Not completely sure but there are some signs.

 

It’s as much confidence and momentum as anything else. Failures and droughts feed back on themselves. It’s not a surprise an excited kid who hasn’t had to play 90 minutes of negative, no help from the midfield, soccer for three months would be quicker to capitalize on the rare chance than Bobby. He doesn’t have a dark cloud of months of garbage help hanging over him.

Three things can be equally true here:
*he isn’t playing well and if this was all we had to go on we’d be justified in thinking he isn’t very good.
* he is a lot better than this
* he would be at double digit goals on any club by the Late winter w/a midfield and tactics that maximized his ability instead of wasting it.

We’ve all seen this before, when a player is in a bad situation Ill designed for his skill set, and rare chances are wasted, confidence plummets and often circles into a feedback loop resulting in blown sitters which then feeds in on itself. This is where Wood is, like Jozy years ago, and just as Sunderland fans were justified, but wrong in thinking he sucked, the same is true w/Wood. I wish players would sniff out bad opportunities like this and avoid them. Better to play in a lesser league than trap yourself in a situation that can go nowhere good and could easily set back your career and ruin your confidence.

 

Wood already more goals this season, counting his Pokal goal, in ten games as Jozy did in his Sunderland career

Hell
Jozy has 4 goals in 91 games out side of MLS and Holland. Bobby has 6 goals in 31 games in the Bundesliga. I don't think it's even comparable.

 

You are underestimating HSV's, ahem, "capabilities." They can ruin any player's career.

Like everyone underestimates this guy's capabilities

 

https://www.liga-report.de/bundesli...er&utm_medium=Manuell&utm_campaign=3872817921
Amidst speculation that Arp may replace Wood in the starting lineup, Markus Gisdol acknowledges that Bobby is "currently not in form," due to "a little bit of everything" - both mental and physical, as he carries a knee injury that cut his training session short on Friday. Despite Wood being in a "negative spiral," the coach insisted that he has the "potential to be a good striker...we need him and will support him."

In other words, he is not doing well at this very moment, but playing on an awful team with bad midfielders while your knee is banged up is a rough gig.

 

He's on a pretty big contract for them I think so he'll get more leeway than a typical YA. But maybe a few weeks out of the lineup isn't a bad idea

 

Seeing as how he is playing hurt, then a rest is not a bad thing. If it ends up that they have a healthy player make it so he does not have to play hurt is fine with me.