Can't believe what I'm reading. Last season he was MOTM seemingly more often than not (when fit, admittedly) and this season he hasn't been terrible, just injured a fair bit. I think the problem is people are expecting a CAM that's popping them in from the edge of the box every game not realising that Jose has him playing as more of a box to box midfielder.
It'd be interesting to see how many times he's been the guy that assists the assist. I'm pretty sure if you played him behind Kane in a traditional CAM role his stats would be far better than they currently are.
Well... let's face it... he was not pulling trees out of the ground last season either.
Yea, some folks were happy that he improved since Dec, but that being said, I still feel there was not enough creativity, not enough influence on the game.
But people want to be positive and I felt that most of the praise went over the top (well, he was supposed to be upgrade on prime Eriksen and new Modric with better scoring ratio). That can explain part of "was motm seemingly more often than not"...
And this season. Sorry, but in grand scheme of things he has been almost useless.
By now he has played 1922 minutes of EPL football. That will be out of 5130 (38 games last season+19 in current one, both played and those he will miss out on). That will be ~38% of game time. And most of the time he played ... once again... not pulling trees out of the ground. Given that he cost 48 mEUR, I don't think he has even came close to living up to that kind of investment.
I am not rushing to move him on, but I am getting more and more sceptical.
He needs to start producing and contributing on constant basis as soon as he gets back.