PLENTY of teams would take on James. Just not for what he thinks he should be paid. He will need to adjust his terms once again. Fortunately for him, Everton doesnt really have anyone in that MF that can do what he can do. So even if Benitez decides to bench him it would be at the risk of leaving your best AMF on the bench and Everton supporters (who already dislike the idea of Benitez being the manager) wont be too patient. Itlay or Spain are still his best options.
Those things plus his baggage all go together though. So I think the Market is really small. Maybe less than a handful. And if he stays at Everton he may play but he won't have that joy and spirit he needs to be successful. It will probably be a horrible experience but we shall see how it goes.
James is getting a bad rap here and I do think some of it is unwarranted (while a lot of it is): - He seems to have a genuine recurring injury with his calf that he hasn't been able to fully overcome since he was like 25 or 26 years old. - He has awful judgement on social media and the stories his camped have leaked. His efforts to take back control of his narrative have only made things worse. - His choice not to stay at Bayern when he had the opportunity for an elegant exit from Real that would have reaffirmed his status as a world beater was a huge error in judgement. The most bitter pill of this - the image of him as lazy and unwilling to work - was initiated by Rafa Benitez and now at Everton where he ironically went to rehabilitate his image the guy shows up and tarnishes him again. His problem now is medical. If the Colombian medical team no longer believes he is healthy enough to call up, I start to worry about medical checks at clubs that might consider him and the top clubs taking a bite at all.
So Benetiz not going to use an attacking mf? His other one might have child porn or some thing worse that will put him in jail and out of the club….
Benitez pretty much threw James under the bus by calling him out on fitness issues during the Pre season. Any team who hears that immediately will drop the price on a player if fitness/injuries are the problem. Teams want to invest in players who can handle 40+ games. I’ve said this over 100 times. Other than Cuadrado, most of our guys are brittle and can’t keep up physically. It’s a shame I would love to see James prove everyone wrong this year.
I think this is fair, he's had legit injury issues that have set him back constantly. The problem I think is that we don't get to see him in training, we don't know what he's doing on his vacations but we do get to see him make these terrible decisions based on his contracts and social media and it paints a really bad picture. The guy clearly though has really bad people managing him or is simply not taking their advice.
Yeah. I just don't understand the calf injury. At Banfield, Falcioni played him as an 8 a lot of the time and he ran a ton. I guess it's like when you hear about people who develop bad knees, but by now you'd think someone in sports med would have found a solve for him.
Yeah it could be some sort of arthritis that flares up constantly? Not really sure because the calves usually aren't where that manifest. At Porto he was basically a winger and early on he was pretty damn athletic, his speed and mobility seems to have dropped off a lot and I have to imagine a lot of it is due to injuries, but even so he's so smart on the ball and has so much vision and is so clinical in his passing and finishing he's still a really valuable player. He's just made such bad mistakes that have compounded, the guy really needed smart people he trusted to set him straight but it never seemed to happen.
Muscle injuries are generally due to lack of proper training and conditioning He doesn’t train properly during the off season and it leads to muscle injuries and poor fitness No excuse for him to spend the summer doing IG and social media shit instead of working on a 6 week regimen to be in top shape
But it would have shown up earlier in his career. The way they train at Madrid and Bayern would have worked that out over time or his training staff would have raised. I just can't imagine that's it.
Nobody works harder in the off season than cr7. I don't buy that. I find it unlikely that no trainer in the interim wouldn't have told him to change his regimen if that was the issue. You'd think all these teams would be devoting massive attention to this dude's calf.
The calf injuries is truly just mindblowing at this point. The best trainers from the top clubs in the world havent been able to figure out how to solve it. Could be dealing with what Ray Allen dealt with throughout his career. And no one can blame fitness level when it comes to him https://uproxx.com/dimemag/report-ray-allen-has-ankle-injuries-because-his-calf-muscles-are-too-big/
Eventually he has to do his part. All those teams have great training staffs yet there are always players that don’t turn up like Isco, James, Marcelo, hazard
That's interesting! A good friend of mine had to have calf surgery precisely for similar reason he had worked them so much over time that they would cause him all kinds of pain because they were too big. I wonder if James does have something like Allen and their is concern on recovering full explosiveness if you intervene? Id never even considered until you mentioned it.