I was not a fan of the signing and called him "The Chunky Gooner" for quite a while. He worked hard though and trimmed down and proved me wrong. With him being out for pretty much the whole of next season will we move on without him? By the time he gets back to the kind of fitness levels required we would be looking at new signings. Such bad luck but we can't dwell on it and I just don't see him ever getting back in the team.
I think we just have to get on with it and see what happens. When he returns, he'll need to re-prove himself again. He's out such a long time that even if he returns to be the same player, he may not be good enough because we've moved on and progressed further
Teams both evolve and change, successful and good ones anyhow. But the exact way in which we will do this is fairly unforeseeable. This time next year we will be talking positively and negatively about different guys to who we are now, some of those may be expected, some may be surprising. None of this is concrete, the upcoming season will provide us with that story and tangible evidence of how the team is working out. So the main issue with him is what is concrete, mostly this rests on how much the injury will prevent him achieving the necessary long-term fitness to be able to contribute to the side effectively and at least put himself in the frame for consideration should the midfield, where he obviously plays, be an area where we need something different or an adjustment. Whether he will be the adjustment that's needed is again relatively impossible to say. I don't think it's a case of him 'proving himself' only a case of 'proving fitness to perform'. He improved a lot once he got into the team, was looking quite solid and has good character, so that's a positive for him in the recovery phase, but again, perhaps the injury is too severe for him to continue on this upward curve and will stymie his advancement. He's also still pretty young which works in his favour, both in how his body heals, and where he is at this stage as a player coming into his prime rather than in it.
This isn't like Lallana who is entering the end stage of his career where injuries are harder to recover from. Or Ings who suffered multiple injuries, which put back reintroduction (even then Ings still got games last season) Ox is 24, plenty of time for him to recover and rediscover his form. He's expected back towards the end of the season, so a handful of games, followed by summer of pre-season. The club wont buy in January, so by next summer he won't be any further down the pecking order than after this summer, which is probably behind Keita for that advanced CM role. Also I believe Milners contract expires next summer, could be that he leaves as OX comes back.
yeah. anyway lads while he's injured i think we should just remember he's contract runs to 2022 and he is on 90k a week. so.... thats 4.68million per year, or 4.68mil for recovering this year he is out. Theres 4 years left for him so thats 16mil paid to him. I'm sure he won't be weeping that much.
Klopps also pretty loyal to injured players Reus was always getting injured for BvB, yet was never ditched
Reus is a special player who has proved himself, Oxo still has a lot to prove. He was at Arsenal for years and struggled to cement a place or a role, he played half a season with Liverpool and there are still question marks.
To be fair though he upped his game and was looking a good player consistently, it's a real shame what happened to him but footy can be cruel.
yeah, yeah it is. strip out all the fanciness of the situation and the man has to eat and have a roof over his head. If he couldn't kick a ball he'd have to stack shelves in tesco. An ACL to a shelf stacker is far more serious than an ACL to a millionaire footballer. Only one of them might lose his house cos he can't work.
You've just said it's all about money and than explain how it's not so important for a footballer. Make your mind up you plum!
I've explained why money is important. He can sit on his hole and get better.... same as karius can sit on his and get paid. I don't feel sorry for anyone who's sorted like that, even if they are nice lads who deserve better.
Most footballers are the least deserving of these multi-million pound contracts, put any of them aside and there's another guy who could do the job, this isn't counting the uniquely talented ones
No, I'm pretty sure shareholders and Sky Sports presenters are further down the table of deserving of the rewards which come from our excessive interest in football. I don't like Richard Branson sucking up billions in train subsidies, so I don't use his trains. If I didn't like footballers' pay scales, I'd stop watching it, because I'm the reason football has so much money. I'd rather the rewards go to those who give up their childhoods to move to a club for a career which will be over in their 30s, possibly sooner if they get a serious injury, while a bunch of fans ignore their community work, write ****e about them on social media and send them death threats over errors in one game. They don't put that stuff in the job spec.
