Pepi is on the 4th year of a 5 year, 10 mill euro deal, if reports are to be believed. He's reportedly the 3rd highest PSV player after Dest and Chucky... fwiw.
If true that would seem to indicate they need to see what he's got this year and see whether to offer and extend his contract or sell. Neither gets done if he has another season like last year.
With the reduced role he's not going to get big offers though. No idea what is going to happen. He's an expensive guy to keep on the bench.
We've clearly established you're an establishment guy here - but again, unless this works out in the long run, we may be looking at this period as some lost time when he could have been playing more. And I'm just talking perfect world - not the reality that he's signed with PSV. In other words it's not a question of Groningen vs. PSV. Josh Sargent was playing a lot at a similar age at a higher level no? Is he significantly better than Pepi? Will be interesting to see how their careers progress even though it's hard to make any particular conclusions. Ultimately, Pepi should reach the level his skill and hard work will take him. I think Josh has benefited from all the experience he has under his belt to this point.
Sorry, but this was far from a normal youth team. It was stacked up with Joël Drommel, Driouech, Ricardo Pepi, Isaac Babadi and Tygo Land, who are regular first team players. Also Young Ajax started with a number of first team selection players, of which one also played in Europa league qualifiers. This was a confrontation between selections that outclass several Eredivisie teams.
This YPSV vs YAjax smells like an agreement between the two clubs to have a serious confrontation with first team selection players for match fitness and tactical honing purposes.
Sarge is in the Champs atm, fwiw (although I think there's a similar trajectory.) Again, tho, my point is not "The current situation is great for Pepi" and I've never argued that. My point is the stuff that is happening to Pepi, this year and last, is fairly reasonable and were LdJ an American and Pepi some Dutch upstart, no one would be screaming for Pepi to get more minutes. PSV's handling of Pepi is not 'pathetic' (tho PSV as a club... well... we can call them pathetic and I'm fine with that.) It's just weird to me that posters who have followed pro and Euro soccer for a long time don't understand - or pretend to not understand - how clubs and player management works. And had Pepi convinced at Augsburg - or been willing to fight for a spot at Augsburg - he wouldn't have to be Striker-in-waiting to LdJ. Speaking of Sarge, we heard the same kind of stuff when he was sitting behind Pukki from the faithful around here.
He barely played for Augsburg and went for 10 mill, supposedly. If LdJ is still keeping Pepi on the bench anything close to full time in 2 seasons, LdJ is Lee Majors and Pepi is not as good as we think.
Keep him on the bench, extend him on the cheap, play him after LDJ kaput, and cross fingers for a big return on investment.
Pepi has 4 seasons, including the one that just started, on his contract. LdJ is about to turn 34. Currently he is the 3rd oldest active player in the Ered. The other 2 are 34. One is a keeper. If a 36 year old LdJ is keeping Pepi to 10 mins a game... Pepi ain't the player we care about anyway. But ok.
He's supposedly on €2.35m/year gross. Reyna is on €2.50m/year gross. Reyna has 2 years left, Pepi has 4. Both are 21. Both play little but tend to look good when they do. I'm ok with Gio staying with BvB for now. His time to extend is almost here, and Dortmund has more money than PSV. They have no reason to low-ball him. The Dutch club, on the other hand, can keep postponing Pepi as a starter for 3 more years. And they don't have the money to just renew him at the same gross salary if he's not starting. Plus, the Eredivisie gives young players plenty of time, even when there's an elder who is solid for the position. I don't like what's going on. Not once I look at it in context.
I was looking at an incomplete list. There's a couple of older guys, actually. Rick von Wolfswinkle is 35 now.and he had 2300 minutes last season and is still going to get minutes. Bokila is also older, but only got about 1000 minutes last season in the Eerste - and a few older defenders/backs as well and I forgot about the grand old keeper Remko Pasveer. So more like a dozen active LdJ's age or older, tho only 3 CFs. Erceg is also 34 and moved to the Ered this summer. But Ricky vW is a year older and plays/played a lot.
I would have. With player at that age and importance I would have been griping that they didn't rest him in games they had big leads and exposed him to injury. They were actually very lucky that a a player that age getting so many minutes didn't get hurt. Had to repost because of this crazy, cool name.
See…and here I thought last year the story was that LDJ playing every available minute had nothing really to do with Pepi…and everything to do with how well LDJ was playing…and the fact that he was the scoring leader. By that logic…it remains that as long as LDJ continues to perform….he gets priority over Pepi. So why is LDJ’s ability to keep beating up Eredivisie defenses at any age somehow now indicative of whether or not Pepi could do it too if given the opportunity? You made clear it had nothing to do with Pepi…and everything to do with LDJ. Frankly…and I know our Dutch friends are gonna be offended by this….but the list of strikers that can beat up the eredivise while playing 3500-4000 minutes for PSV is long……very very very very long…and if Pepi needs to wait for LDJ to stop being able to do that before he’s given an opportunity he needs to leave.
I expect Pepi to remain the back-up this season but he really needs to be a rotational starter and get more than garbage minutes like he did last year If he can start 20-25% of games and get more 20+ minute substitute appearances that would be a big improvement. Always a decent chance that LDJ has at least one injury this year that opens the door for him to get a run of starts. I think LDJ is a better(more complete) striker than Pepi right now, but Pepi has the potential to be better. He just actually needs to play and continue developing. If he gets garbage minutes again to start the year I wouldn't be shocked if he pushes for a January loan.
If the list of strikers that could "beat up" the eredivisie with PSV was really "long" then PSV would have won the title more than once in the past 6 seasons, and LdJ would have (co)won the scoring title more than twice in his entire career. That so many folks want to willfully pretend they (or, more importantly Pepi and his team) don't understand the situation is pretty funny to me, but far be it from me to stop folks who want to pisse altyt tegen de maen, as my father-in-law would say.
Uhm, actually the numbers show the list gets shorter and shorter, or more precisely the numbers of goals a given list of strikers manage to score in the Eredivisie shrinks with each season. LdJ and Pavlides last season were an aberration from the descending norm. You might notice who was the aberration in 2018/19 So what about PSV strikers beating up the Eredivisie? The last one who did that was about 20 years ago. Silly, silly biases are hard to kill.