Eagle » Tue Aug 09, 2022 11:48 am wrote:Reg » Tue Aug 09, 2022 8:14 am wrote:This season is make or break for Thiago, if he can't play 30+ games he must go. We need reliable quality, not just quality. Ox has to go for the same reason, simply too brittle.
Thiago played in 39 games for us last year (25 in the PL, 10 in CL, 4 in the FA CUP). 30 the season before (24 in the PL, 4 in the CL, 2 in the FA CUP).
Ox's current injury is his first since he returned to fitness in November 2020. He'll leave when his contract expires simply because the team has evolved past him.
Ox hasn’t been injured that much lately because he hasn’t been playing much lately. When he does play, his injury record is poor…. Just like when he was at Arsenal. I think we should let Ox go and replace him with quality. Matheus Nunes from Sporting would be a good shout. He missed one game last year due to Corona. He’s 1.83 and would be a good replacement for Ox.
As for Thiago we played 63 matches so that is a little under half he missed and even if you exclude the smaller cup matches, he’s around 60%, not stellar by any stretch. A quick stat search says he missed 23 games last year and 24 the year before through injury. Regardless of the stats, even in reading his interviews he seems to suffer from a lot of injuries. I read he said he couldn’t feel his feet the CL final, probably explains his average performance in that match.
You have to admit Eagle, we are light in midfield when it comes to durable players. As someone else posted, we never replaced Gini’s reliability. Some players are durable like Salah, Gini, Robertson, Fabinho to an extent and some aren’t (like most our midfield). We can’t put all our hope on Bellingham next year, if we never made CL he would probably turn us down. Focus on this year and worry about next year next year.