Hoppe now Brough: Back at Middlesbrough FC

Hoppe has more goals for Schalke in Jan 2021 than any Schalke player in all of 2020.

 

I forgot to provide a link to the article about choking, which I think is relevant for situations like Jozy had at Hull/Sunderland, Wood had his last few years in the Bundesliga, and Sargent has now with Werder Bremen:

link:
https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/i...ce-explains-greg-norman-1996-masters-meltdown

 

Even if this is all he has, he can take heart in the fact that people still remember Jeremy Lin.

 

I suppose it could be simply a matter of warm bodies, but knowing his youth record he got a run anyway. It could be they saw a player in there, and didn't blame him for not scoring.

I am very excited to see what he does. I haven't watched enough him to really have an opinion, but can tell from 5 in 3 that he had a nose for goal in the last couple of weeks.

He is not going to get many chances with this team. One of the posters on the S04 forum linked above seemed to think one of his best traits was he never gets his head down, he just plays on and keeps playing until the final whistle.

Somebody mentioned Gyasi, and early on I thought Gyasi was stealing a living calling himself a footballer. He has grown on me over time, he presses well, works hard, and he is lucky with such frequency that it has to be more than coincidence. A rich man's Gyasi would not be horrible thing.

Either way 20/21 is looking lovely. I do not believe he can score enough to keep them up, he might score enough to make it interesting. If a few other players were to get inspired maybe it is possible, but not likely. That defense with 44 goals shipped is dreadful. If he is ruthless in front of goal and can bag a few more for this woeful side he probably plays first team football next year.

 

Regarding Schalke's Portuguese center forward, Gonçalo Paciencia, I was doing a bit of research on his injury – the one that helped open the door to the first team for Hoppe. Apparently it was to his knee. Not sure of the full severity of it, but it was bad enough to require surgery, which he had in the first week of December.

Here are some of his highlights with Eintracht Frankfurt (where he's on loan from):

 

little chick pea is only 32. he scored 17 goals once, his next highest in a season is 13. hes overrated, hes always been overrated. im looking for a higher quality player for our guys to aspire to.

 

OK. If I looked at this correctly, McKennie was Schalke’s top goal scorer in calendar year 2020 with 3 goals. Pretty cool to have two young Americans lead goal scoring two calendar years in a row (so far) for a (vert crappy) BL1 team!

 

When watching the last Schalke game one thing that caught my eye was how Hoppe shied away from a header late in the game. He stepped towards goal in behind the defender seemingly anticipating a defender miss of flub. The defender easily headed it led to direct build-up for the 2nd Köln goal. Yes, Hoppe had good hustle and pressing, even late in the game, but that was a ‘wet behind the ears’ move to let that header go unchallenged. I did not watch the replay, so maybe I remember it wrong?

 

I have watched every minute he has played this season and he is definitely weak WRT to aerial duels. His hold up play needs improvement too but each of these can be learned on the job.... and he will get plenty of minutes to improve in these regards if he keeps putting the ball in the back of the net.

 

I have thought he is pretty good with flick-on headers. Not bad at all. But I’ve never seen him head a ball at the goal.

 

Hoppe is like Cheech the way I am like Jennifer Lawrence. We are both human.

 

I would say "that great game has pushed Hoppe in a good direction". And "that great game made Harit start to play like crap." Harit has been greedy and ineffective. They need the less selfish version of Harit back.

 

That was the first thing I saw when I saw any videos of him playing in the reserve games or whatever he was doing then. He was making those runs in behind the defense, asking for the ball to be played. I'm stoked to see him score those, but he's going to need to develop plan B when the opposition doesn't play a high line. Thankfully, no one in the 1BL respects Schalke 04 to NOT play a high line, so he may have a few more games to make those runs before someone figures them out. Hope he takes advantage of these upcoming games!

 

That sounded like one of those SAT questions, now my head hurts.

 

I have been around this game long enough to know that “all he does is convert most of the chances he gets” is not a deal breaking criticism for a CF.

 

Like Cris Carter, biggest complaint about him was "all he does is score touchdowns!" Well, I'm not sure what else I am paying these guys to do.

 

That’s a great analog. I was racking my brain trying to figure out what this situation reminded me of and you nailed it. Hopefully Hoppe ends up with more staying power than Lin did, but this sure has the same vibe about it as that did at the time.

 

If link-up play isn't something Matt does well, maybe Harit should stop expecting him to do it and focus on feeding him with chances he can use.

They're deep in the relegation doo-do and he's the only one who's scoring. Feed him balls he can use, not the balls someone else can use.

 

Look, I didn't expect to get ratioed for my post but such is life on the interwebz.. I like Matthew and I hope he scores bangers every game. Me wanting him to continue to grow and do a better job at linking with teammates isn't a dig on him. Kid is 19 and was in college a year ago.

Sure, but Harit has been creating a ton of chances and in that particular play, there were defenders blocking the through ball pass lane. Hence why Harit tried to play a square ball for the give n go.

 

5 in his last 3 must have been the prerequisite

 

Not the Altidore thread, lets take this somewhere else so we don't clutter up the thread of a kid who needs to keep his head on straight!

 

God, the kid is out of contract in the summer? Just like Schalke 04 of late, they are like the Keystone Kops. They can't do anything right lately. I know the kid was probably pretty value-less up until very recently, but they could have at least offered him a cup of coffee to extend his contract at the beginning of the year just in case Gerald Asamoah knew what he was talking about.

 

Hope Hoppe is getting good advice - he's in the catbird seat. Schalke can't bench him, it's too late for the freeze-out.

 

It's laughable. If he says thanks but no thanks, what are they going to do. Bench him and risk going down to 2BL without him scoring. Obviously if he stops scoring and refuses to sign it's a much easier proposition for them to freeze him out. But leave it to Schalke 04 to be forced to allow Hoppe to drive up his value at the expense of the club.