You're confusing me with someone else. I was the one who originally made the point that Sarge's not playing a typical striker role but more a CAM/SS and his creativity is why Florian keeps (kept?) playing him 90.
Wanted to share a quote from Kohfeldt after the Hertha match: "Josh can be relieved today because he finally rewarded himself for his top performance. I'm extremely happy for him. I know that forwards are always judged by the number of their goals. But that's not fair and it falls short of what a coach needs to look at. Josh always gives everything and he's incredibly important for the whole construct. Now he scored, and therefore public judgement should be that he's a complete forward." (Link) It wasn't too long ago when some people on this thread tried to argue that Kohfeldt is biased against Sargent.
This was great to see. Josh is a really good all around player and probably doesn't need to be a prolific scorer to be a valuable part of a lot of teams. But if you want to be a striker getting some goals now and then will always help your case, especially goals like that where it didn't look like much was really going to happen on the play until he took matters into his own hands. Very impressive, strength, awareness and technique all on display in that one play.
The job of every soccer player is to help his/her team win. That's really the only metric that matters. Now, finding measurable in-game proxies for that is hard, so we default to basic items like save% for keepers and goals for forwards. No arguing that scoring goals helps you team win, but it's not the only way. I think Kohfeldt has been saying for a long time that Josh doesn't need to score goals to help the team win. We wish he would score more, and I suspect Kohfeldt would love for him to score more, but "goals scored" is not the coach's metric for Josh.
biased against developing sargent as a forward for the usmnt is probably the fair (and accurate) characterization. i think people here still hate the little service he gets coupled with the high amount defensive responsibility
While this is true, there's also the point that Josh will probably get a much more lucrative contract next go-round if he's scoring goals. Being a glue guy at forward ain't gonna pay.
That’s probably true. But makes me think that Josh could be a moneyball purchase for a really smart team. Just like Wes was.
I wish it were possible to discuss players with USMNT aspirations in a vacuum, without opinions contaminated by a rooting interest in other players competing for the same spot. Impossible, I know. But it is the source of a lot of ridiculous criticism, like competitors posting Yelp reviews. So nice to see that paragraph from his coach. It injected a little perspective and sanity back into the Sargent discussion.
Thru last week Werder had almost twice as high of a ppg average w/ Sargent at ss/wing (1.5) as opposed to cf (0.86). It was literally the difference in competing for a Europa League spot (overachievement) and relegation (underachievement). So he'd seemingly only been helping them overall at the one position, but hurting them at the other. In addition to the lack of scoring there was disappointment he wasn't that involved throughout the game either, when he wasn't paired w/ a Selke or Fullkrug. That's not a good target fw's M.O. They impact the game either posting up and outletting or running on to a longer ball. Thus these analogs to target fw's who don't score but still help you win, ala Heskey, simply haven't tracked up until now. Hull played a lot better w/ Altidore (which I noted at the time & was due to his target ability) in spite of not scoring, though you still could have critiqued him separately in that department. There's a lot of conflating what he does in the one role to the other, as well as his last match. Hopefully he's developing as a lot of 20-21 fw's do, because if he reverts back to the old form, that's not good enough when he plays cf as opposed to other spots. It's not helping him to pretend it is.
Heskey? I was thinking more about the contrasts, what with Heskey being taller, more bulked-up, black and - the most glaringly obvious difference - not having ginger hair The other big difference between Josh and Heskey is, of course, that Josh is much more mobile than Heskey. Still, if he's as effective as the big man he'll have a very good career: 17 seasons and 520 games in the EPL, with 110 goals, plus 50 Championship and 40 A-League games, along with 60+ England caps and an FA Cup, a UEFA Cup and 2 Super Cups (UEFA as well as FA). At Liverpool alone, he made 223 appearances in all competitions over 4 seasons. Maybe he never really looked the part but he certainly played it. Otherwise Gerard Houllier wouldn't have signed him, let alone played him as much as he did.
It could be the other wings are horrible and that could also be a reason why sargent doesnt score when he is at forward. maybe the other forwards are pretty decent so sargent at wing + a decent forward is better than sargent at forward + crappy wing....and sargents best position could still be striker depsite the stats you reference. (btw I think he is indeed a striker) your numbers are about werder not sargent.
So essentially Bremen’s first 5 games where they played Hertha, Schalke, Arminia, Freiburg, and Hoffenheim.
It includes when Selke returned several games ago, so for Josh amounted to 8 games at ss/wing, 7 at cf. That's a significant amount w/ that kind of gap in results. But if not reflective like you're implying, that would more show he's not that effective in other positions either (which I think he is), than it would he's been good at cf. It would just be mitigating if he played tougher comp as a cf. But relegation battling #'s are still not a positive.
Returned as a sub. You’re attributing the 45-72 minutes Sargent played without Selke as him playing ss/wing the entire game.
An interesting comparison between Sargent and Hoppe is on the werder fan site. An interesting quick read about how they got to where they are. in German but you can google translate it of course. https://www.deichstube.de/news/werd...r-alexander-nouri-bundesliga-zr-90181703.html
Sargent with a well deserved Kicker rating of 2.5 (1.0 best, 6.0 worst). While it may seem low it is a solid rating by Kicker standards.
A recent phenomenon. He had like 4 goals in 3 seasons at Schalke in all comps, compared to 3 or so goals at Juventus.
Problem is, even if Josh is playing according to plan and is more a CAM than a striker, on paper he figures as one and when better teams look to buy a striker, they do care about production numbers.