Friedel's Accent, instead of blindly deferring to 3 Euro coaches, why don't you form your own opinion? It's not like this kid is Jerry White & only a handful of us have seen him play ---he's demonstrated his talent time & again with the national team. He's a bad fit with Derby. ********ing Riquelme would be a bad fit for Derby. He should come to MLS, IMO. He can go back to Europe after South Africa, if he can keep his place in the national side.
I may be proven wrong down the road, but I still refuse to believe that Feilhaber is simply a shite player. He hasn't worked wonders in the scant minutes he's played, but on the other hand , he hasn't looked over his head. In retrospect, the Davies firing was bad for him. Davies brought him to Derby, spotted him minutes against clubs like Arsenal and Chelsea. Maybe he did have plans to slowly work him into the setup. Jewell probably won't give him the time of day. I just hope he lands on his feet somewhere else in January.
I don't think he's looked brilliant time and again with the Nats--flashes of creativity, absolutely, mixed with a good amount of "meh." Further, I defer to people whose job it is to evaluate talent, especially if those people aren't blinded by national team fandom. Even more especially if those people see the player on a regular (i.e. not once every few months) basis. Not enough Bigsoccer posters do this--because they think they have all the answers, and coaches are just morons out to keep our boys down. Of course, that characterizes all sports fandom, everywhere--we all think we know better than the managers, players, etc. Rarely is that actually the case. What makes you so special that you can out-evaluate experienced managers? Or is it just that everyone else is biased and you're the only objective one? PS. It has nothing to do with the fact that they're "Euro" coaches. Oh, brother.... PPS. Go back and read my posts. Not once have I said that I don't think Benny is talented or that I think he has no future. Not even the most ungenerous reading of my thoughts could pull those implications out. There is a huge difference between asking "at what point do we adjust our expectations while still hoping for the best?" and asserting that "this player sucks!"
Exactly how many managers will it take passing on him before people start to question his abilities?... One more? two? In my opinion it is not a manager problem.
Forget the national team right now. What has Benny done outside the National Team in the last 3 years? Not Much.
Mascherano rotted on the bench at west ham guess he couldn't cut it in the EPL either. Sometimes it really is a bad fit. However the starts on the National Team and fantastic strike against mexico made benny become a little over rated. I'd like to see him in Portugal come January.
Let's see - Coaches who liked Benny. Some guy who coached the US U-20's in Netherlands - and I defy anyone who saw the games to say he didn't play well there. He simply did. He was good. Some guy who coached UCLA - Benny was a walk on (but I doubt he was a true "walk on" as playing for Irvine Strikers he had to be a known quantity. Perhaps just didn't need a scholarship.) Some guy who coached HSV when he was bought. (and, if press reports can be believed, even Huub was interested in keeping him, even if he didn't rate him immediate first team material.) Some guy who bought him at Derby. Some guy who coaches the USMNT National Team. Coaches who don't like Benny: The guy who bought him at Derby, I guess. Who is now an ex-coach and lost a butt-load of a games with the line-up he clung to like a hydrophobic sailor in a hatch-smashing gale. The guy who came in at HSV, I guess. Who is a good coach and a good judge of talent, in my opinion. The guy who is now at Derby who has not put him on the bench for both games he's been there (both games that he's lost, by the way.) yet sees fit to let Eddie "I was EPL quality when I was in the CC, but now I'm Div 1 quality and oddly am in the EPL" Lewis to slip on the shorts. I'm going to suggest, as I have before, that Benny's situation is, well, situational. It was a stupid move to begin with and one that bound to work against him. Derby suck. They are desperate not to lose. Benny is not a guy you play - even if he's on his game - when you are desperate not to lose. So Benny may be playing badly in the practice. He may not be able to sustain his very real moments of very good soccer we've seen at the U-20 and nat level. But even if he could, I'm not sure he'd fit in Derby's plans. I think the real problem is he is not an RM in the sense that Derby wants or thinks they needs and I think they bought him as an RM. And that may be (to Seanie's great redemption) Bob Bradley's fault. Perhaps that infamous phone call assured them Benny could play RM. Bob still seems to believe he can. But he ain't a right sided Eddie Lewis. And never will be. And that, I think, is the biggest problem. Oakley, Pearson, even Lewis were Davies boys, and he was going to stick with them. Jewell has wittled down goal differential and will be happy to tie the next 18 games 0-0. None of which is good for Benny even if he is kicking ass in those "no ossiends allowed" training sessions. Now, there is one other possibility that was suggested a bit in Hamburg. Benny could be playing well but be a bit of a baby. He started whining pretty early - given that he was not that long out of college etc. - at HSV and it sounded like, had he had a more, uh, Germanic attitude, he would have happily figured in HSV's plans (if you can believe the press.) Perhaps Benny has ego issues we are not privvy to that undercut his position. This is all wild speculation in the best BS tradition, but since no one can see him practice, everyone has seen him play. Everyone has seen Derby play. Everyone can see that Derby are outclassed. Well, it is something that Benny can't even make the bench. I mean, Pearson is a Full Scottish International, but not exactly top choice midfield. And I'll bet dollars to deepfired Mars bars Pearson won't be starting in Euro '08.
I predict Benny stays at Derby through next season, doesn't see much time, then after the clearing out, plays quite a bit in the Championship.
With the exception of Barnes, Miller, and maybe Earnshaw, I find it hard to believe another Prem team will pick almost any of the other guys up when(if) Derby goes down.
Eddie has been one of the more successful stories from the USA. He represented himself well for a long time in both leagues and a couple of different teams. He actually had to endure some Eurosnob that held him back. A move to another team made a big difference. Don't give up hope.
But those two lists of teams are a complete mix of styles and squads so not sure what you are saying. There are clubs in list 1 who are not suitable but play in exactly the same way as clubs in list 2 who apparently are suitable. Blackburn don't play the same as Portsmouth or Tottenham.
His biases are showing. All the teams on the second list are in the top half of the table, except Sunderland (apparently he likes Roy Keane). All the teams on the first list, except Chelsea (apparently he doesn't like Chelsea) are midtable or lower. Chelsea is an interesting inclusion on the first list because, Lampard, Essian, Makalele etc. are the engine that drives Chelsea. My guess is that West Ham (which doesn't play at all like Newcastle) is on the first list because your current YA isn't getting regular playing time right now.
Nor do I, but my point was that with only a season and a half of pro-European football, at the age of 22, and with both his two teams undergoing multiple management changes, it doesn't seem like the kind of history you want to draw conclusions from. That combined with his previous levels of play with the u-20s (again, just a few years ago) and the senior team, and at worst I would say that the evidence is mixed. By comparison I think you could have drawn the same kind of conclusions about Bobby Convey in his early days at Reading.
Actually, Spector seems to be getting fairly regular playing time as the first defensive option off the bench (be it as a defender or midfielder)...but that's neither here nor there in relation to your general point.
A lot of good "Ability" is if the people that make the decisions don't rate it enough to feature him. Derby was a bad move, case closed. it was a head-scratcher of a move IMO t obegin with, and now it seems tol have turned out worse than even I thought it would for him. Hopefully they let him go on a free or loan in the winter or summer.
yeah but what high level team is going to want him and give him any good PT after this whole deal at derby?
Mascherano was a star at Boca and Corinthias and an easy starter for Argentina at the World Cup... I think everyone knew what the real problems were that 1/2 season there... and they it wasnt Mascherano to equate Benny, a guy who has done nothing professionally for 2 squads and 3 different coaches, to Mascherano is ridiculous...
No one's equating Benny and Mascherano. I think they're simply showing an extreme example of how being unable to start for a relegation battler in the Premiership isn't necessarily an indictment of a player's quality.