Happy for him. I expect he will get some real minutes and produce well on a per minute basis. I still find the “unathletic” tag to be … well … just stupid.
Josh is a clever, silky, and yet hardworking player passing through a bit of a crisis. Things will work out for him. To be critical is one thing. To be cruel is another.
Yes Chelsea paid that much for Pulisic, but did you see how much Grealish was rumored to go for and eventually did go for? I don't denigrate his talent in saying this, I think he's one of the better young players in the worlds, but it's hard to imagine that a player of similar talent (and there are some) coming up out of South America (particularly if they aren't from Brazil or Argentina), Africa, North America, Asia etc would go for half of what he did at his age or even 1/3 of that amount. I think part of it is just the inflation of contract values in that league period, but I also think that league's stupidest contracts aren't for guys like Sargent, they are ALWAYS for English players with any perception that they're legit, especially in the attack. I just don't get that kind of fee for Grealish. It strikes me as sane, where is right now, to get that kind of money. But whatever, no matter what, his floor is gonna be reasonably high, it's just at least with Pulisic, you know what he proves and what he can do, even in the midst of what's been mostly a middling performance at Chelsea across the fullness of 2 seasons, he still played a key role in getting them to an FA Cup Final and to a Champions League Final, that alone made his deal well worth it. They don't make either of those runs without him, period.
I think he's plenty athletic. Big enough, plenty strong, plenty fast. What I've been disappointed in is his hesitance to go at defenders 1v1. He gets the ball enough in threatening spots and holds possession well enough, but would be better to see him take chances and go at players. He frequently takes the safe route. Strikers need to be selfish and he's not yet.
I like the move, I think Sargents going to shine once he washes off that Bremen filth. I’m betting 10+ goals and 10+ assists this season. It’s optimistic but I am expecting a big glow up here.
Can't tell if this is serious or not, but love it. I've now increased my prediction to 38 goals. Anything less and he should probably head to the USL.
Sargent will do a hat-trick to shut your doubters up, and proves $15M for a US striker is a steal. LOL.
Another way of thinking about this is whether people think that when they both hit their primes, Gianluca Busio is going to be way better than Sargent. Because they just got bought for roughly the same amount of money by newly promoted teams in top 4 leagues. Busio is a couple years younger, but he also doesn’t have any experience in a top European league. I’m not seeing a lot of indignation about outrageous transfer values in relation to the Busio deal. But if that deal is reasonable, then the Sargent deal seems pretty reasonable too.
Fair enough, but I think most (myself included) think those Venezia transfers are a bit suspect since it's an American owner. They were also interested (apparently) in epb and Durkin when nobody else was. If they do ok in serie A, awesome, but to me it doesn't look great.
Crazy how worried we all were just 2 weeks ago and then a faint rumor of possibly moving elsewhere to him scoring a brace a week ago to him getting a move to the Premier League
He’s not a great finisher; he doesn’t beat players one on one; he’s not particularly fast or strong; he’s not very creative; other than that, he’s ok.
That Norwich will never do. They try to play football no matter what the circumstances and what the division. Will they bunker in a game? Sure, but not for a game. Back when they last came up, Farke told the Guardian "Our quality on the ball should be the difference. That’s what I try to implement. If you are always hunting and chasing, you get exhausted. The idea is to exhaust the opponents, not yourselves. And I believe in this even more here because you have a higher workload and no winter break.” That's their DNA, but it also makes complete sense. Last time out, they finished bottom with a very young squad that was utterly inexperienced at this level and was then ravaged by injuries - at one stage they had 10 players in the treatment room and that room never cleared, even after lockdown. Finishing bottom, they took essentially the same squad to the Championship title. This time round, the 2019-20 season's survivors are way more experienced and the parachute payments of last season, allied to this season's EPL TV money, plus the 40 million euros for Buendia, mean they're signing far better quality players. Josh would be Exhibit B for that. Exhibit A is Billy Gilmour joining on loan. Last time out their star loan signing was Ondrej Duda. If they go down, it'll be by a few points and they'll canter to the Championship title and come back to the EPL even stronger. If they stay up, they could easily do a Bournemouth or even a Burnley and stay up for several seasons.
Absolutely. It's an essential quality in any pro athlete for the simple reason that, to adapt Henry Ford, "If think you can do something you're probably wrong. If you think you can't do it, you're definitely right." Like a lot of people, I thought Hoppe going to the Gold Cup was a foolish gamble. He thought it wasn't, for him. He was right. I wasn't.
Can anyone suggest a signature penance for me? 6 weeks or 6 months? To be extremely clear, if Sargent regularly starts as a winger/8 then I was right, but I need to eat my crow until then. Feed me.