The one player I was surprised did not make the list is 18 yo Montrell Culbreath who has a Leverkusen appearance and a goal this season.
I don't know if the author had any strict eligibility criteria for this, but I wonder if the fact that he's played exclusively for German national youth teams this cycle has something to do with that.
The author started with a fairly rudimentary system that focus on basically minutes at which level at which age and only after that does he adjust for performance and then, last and least, skills and tools. Banks is at the top because he's really the only guy playing in a Top 5 league at that age. Freeman is behind him because performance is discounted; Freeman might have been a Top 10 player in MLS but between Banks' age and league, he ranks higher under this guy's model. The fact that Cavan makes the list at all speaks to his age and scouting; usually a guy with <500 MLS minutes is way down the list. Guys with only youth minutes don't make the list at all -- hence, no Mathis Albert.
In Poch's system, Paredes's skillset places him in competition for a spot at lwb/lb. The pool would then consist of Jedi, Arsten, Paredes, Tolkin.
I don't disagree with any of what you say and fully understand the youth and inexperience factor that comes into play...especially at cb. That being said, we are thin enough at cb and he has been starting regularly and seemingly making a difference. In the first five games of b1 season, he either did not play, or got less than 45 minutes (0, 1, 0, 0, 31 min). They had one win and 4 losses (3/15 points). From that point on, he only played less than 84 minutes once (62 min in a 3-2 loss to Stuttgart) and their record was 3 wins, 6 losses and 4 draws (13/39 points). He may be young but, from all accounts I have seen, he has all the tools and he is obviously getting a lot of experience fast. I haven’t seen him since last time he played for usmnt so I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.
i am completely agnostic on pat, which along with a very limited body of work makes my evaluation relatively simple. i dont know that the goals he scored for the nats (primarily with his feet) mean any more or less than his headed goals in the colaship. while a physical league, i dont know that that shows an improvement in that specific area any more than it shows a hypothetical regression in his play on the ground, you know? while mls and the colaship are comparable enough, theyre both substantially higher level than what we faced in the gold cup up to the final where his effect was notably mitigated. what i know for sure though, if for all his "physical tools" he didnt give either switzerland (second half so he didnt even go up against akanji) or turkey (@75 against solid but unspectacular soyunchu and demiral) any trouble- and i mean at all. even more troubling was the gc final where not only was he unable to occupy (much less effect) their backline, but our lines collapsed back to the halfway line at best. im not ruling anything out- i hope the goals hes scoring are a sign of improvement- but its tough to tell vs colaship comp. but back to things i do know- neither wright nor sargent are that "different profile" we talk about for the presumably "3rd st", which pat inarguably is. sarge plays away from goal and haji doesnt lead the line. thats just the truth, and theres no shortage of evidence with them. so my take is i sure hope pats improving, cause if we want that club in our bag hes the guy. hajis picked a pretty bad time to not score for a long ass time (but in all fairness neither has balo), and i think ultimately we are going to carry balo, pepi, agyemang and wright. im just saying a brace against australia doesnt make haji any "different" a look than the top two names on the list.
I think Poch should bring Banks into the March camp and play him. He and Johnny are my two that I think clearly have the talent (and prior bad lucky for Johnny) to get an evaluation. I'm just sort of in a "trust the coach" on this one because I think it's incredible hard to quantify the error risk for a young player at CB in a World Cup with limited time with teammates and overall. Even if he's killing it at club ... there's still risk there and how do you measure? Add in that I think it's one of the harder positions for a non-coach to evaluate -- especially without understanding instructions, and one of the harder positions to evaluate via TV because the camera is always following the ball ... ... if Poch, a former CB, wants him on the roster, great. If he decides the benefit outweighs any risk, great. He's a risk taker as a coach, so it might still be risky, but that's why we pay him the big bucks. If he doesn't, I'm not going to scream. I mean, I don't do that anyway, but I didn't think PT in the Bundesliga was something that required John Brooks to have a spot or a major role and I don't think Banks' minutes there intrinsically require a spot over all other considerations. I just know those other considerations exist even if it's frankly tough for me to weigh them ... so I'll let Poch do that.
I think Zimmerman has been in a camp, but the general lack of calls is something I've not really understood. I know he's not exactly a possession guy but he was always good with the press and he's a team guy. I do think he slipped thanks to injury and the such, but our CB set up is not exactly top notch.
beyond the eye test Big Pat had averaged ~ 1 aerial won per match in MLS, he is averaging ~3 in The Championship.
As a comparison Christian Benteke averaged 11.7 Aerials won per 90 in 2024. In 2023 he averaged 7.8. When he played in the EPL he was averaging around 10 aerials won per 90.
I feel like he’s had a lot of nagging injuries, nothing major but he hasn’t always been available when rosters have been named.
I missed this, so maybe others did two. An actual honest-to-goodness goal scored in a top 5 league by a forward. Luca Koleosho, still eligible for a one-time switch to the US, scored on his debut for Paris FC against Nantes. Paris won 2-1. A good win as they're trying to put some distance between themselves and the relegation zone. La première rélisation de Luca et la célébration qui va avec ⭐️🔵⚪️ #CertifiéParis #ParisFC I #FCNPFC pic.twitter.com/fr56TjSpDq— Paris FC (@ParisFC) January 19, 2026
not an argument one way or the other, but I wonder what would be a typical number in various leagues. EPL vs EFL vs La Liga vs MLS etc. Obviously different leagues have generally different profiles...EFL likely has more aerial duals in a game vs many of the other leagues.
Ag is dominating at Charlton with 3 shots in the first 25 minutes, one blocked, one saved and one just wide. Derby lead 1-0 through Owen Goal.
Partial disclosure (I am sure that I am leaving quite a bit out): My "analysis" is based mostly upon second hand opinions and a very imperfect and unscientific statistical analysis. As such, my opinion on Banks cannot and should not be considered an argument. As shaky as my evidence is, I still have developed an opinion. Obviously there are the opinions and scouting reports...all that I have seen are positive. There is the fact that, as you have said, cb's tend to mature later due to (imo), the cerebral nature of the position. 1. pro: scouting and general opinion seems to be overwhelmingly positive from transfrmarket to Big soccer to pundits. 2. cons: based on age, he probably isn't ready for a cerebral position that relies heavily on experience. 3. "If you are good enough...you are old enough". Is he? I'm going to oversimplify what it means to be a "good" player. A good player makes the team better and gives the team a better chance of winning. Of course there are limitations to this way of thinking I suppose but I'll ignore them. So the question is how can we measure improvement of Augsburg? I'm going to assume that any team should be at least competitive (win/draw some games) with those teams that are relatively close in the table (for Augsburg, that would probably mean spots 10-18), and have very little chance against those that are significantly higher. With that in mind, I am going to completely ignore results vs the top 5 in the table (Bayern, BVB, Hoffenheim, Stuttgart, RBL) and only consider their record vs the rest of the league. The following is probably one of the most simplistic analysis you will ever see but that's all I got. Against teams ranked 6-18: Banks minutes <= 45: 1-0-3 (25% pts); minutes>45: 3-4-2 (48% pts) The above minutes are comparable to the other starting cb's Matsima and Schlotterbeck. Matsima <=45: 0-3-1(25% pts); minutes>45: 4-1-4 (48% pts) Schlotterbeck <=45: 1-1-2 (33% pts); minutes>45: 3-3-3 (44%) For reference, with all three in the lineup, their record vs 6-18 is 2-0-1 (67% pts). Oh...one more thing. The other significant thing I can think of that makes me think Banks has a shot to be included is Pochettino. It's impossible to do a psychoanalysis based on lineups etc but his treatment of Freeman, in particular, makes me think that if Poch sees potential that is great enough, he will take him along. He seems more like the guy that goes for it on 4th down and short than the guy that punts.
As to why Coventry put the 200 million tag on Wright, even if fictitiously, hes giving them valuable goals to go up. Secured a 2-1 W today over a strong Milwall team. Currently, Wright is a comfortable 23 or 26th man on the cup roster.
Fotmob Championship ratings today: Agyemang got a nice 7.3 in a 2-1 win, 5 shots, 2 on target. Kelman came on in the 72' for Charlton and had 1 shot getting 6.3. Haji started and got the winning goal: 7.6. Dike sat on the bench as his team lost 5-0 at home to Sargent free Norwich
Well thought out post. I have a theory that Poch wanted to leave him alone so that his coach would play him and he'd get to see him with lots of real minutes. I think his passing is better than any on the team except Ream and Richards. Has his defense and errors been good enough? I have no idea but I'm sure Poch does and he still has more time until the March window. If he keeps playing and improving his chance goes up maybe 1% every week. If he does get called in he needs to impress like a few other young players have. Brooks made it at a similar age and our defenders might have been better then (shrug - too many cocktails to spend time looking it up).
Well, old man Ream was playing then, for Bolton, but didn’t make the squad. Checking it out though he didn’t even make the prelim 30. Besler, Brooks, Omar G, and Cameron were the CBs.
I don’t know if I’m right or not, but I always look at athletes who improve all throughout their career as potential coaches. The way Ream continued to grow as a player indicates an ability to understand his strengths and weaknesses, it indicates intelligence. He continually learned more about how to succeed in his league than his league learned about how to make him fail. IOW he was smarter than everyone else. Which is what you want in a coach.