Yes. Average. Goals? Assists? Below average. Corners apparently good but we never scored any. Freekicks were his thing. He worked very hard and ran a lot. But he never looked like someone who should move to a better side.
Funny things opinions init, I can't believe people still think he was anything more than that He only became one of the first names on the team sheet once we became ****e. He was a bit part player when we were actually decent as I recall as we had better options ahead of him. I'll ask the same question I always do when this discussion comes up - what attributes do you think he excels at other than his set pieces and fitness/work rate? Tackling? Creativity? Goal scoring? Aggression? Leadership? Progressive passing? None of those for me and you need at least a couple in central midfield to be anything more than average as far as I'm concerned.
I suppose the question is average what - average PL player I'd agree. But that is better than most of our squad for the past 10 years, so he was definitely not one of our average players. As for goals, he was a CM and played pretty deep for most of his time. When he started playing in a slightly more advanced role, he scored, 8, 10, then 9 goals in those seasons. Everyone's favourite attacking mid Dusan Tadic had 4 full seasons and returned 4, 8, 3 & 6. So purely looking at goals, if JWP isn't even average, Tadic must be crap!
His 3 seasons in an attacking position returned 8, 10 and 9 goals, so yeah, good goal scorer from midfield. Decent tackler, if nothing special. Good pass too. I dont think he was world class at anything (other than the obvious). But when you add very sold passing, goalsa and tackling to the best work rate in the league and an obviously fantastic set piece, you get one of our best players in recent years and a solid PL player. Pochettino*, Koeman, Hasenhuttl and the rest of them clearly rated them as they all played him pretty much every single game. *not every game but he clearly rated him enough to make him a starter.
I don't think he was a decent tackler at all and in general lacked the aggression and physicality to be effective as a defensive midfielder. Good passing in terms of recycling the ball and rarely misplacing 5-10 yard ones backwards and sidewards. Not very effective when it comes to progressive passing though. Disagree about the goal scoring too as I specifically said excluding set pieces. Of his ten goals in 22/23 seven of them came from set pieces so he didn't contribute much outside of that. Can't be arsed to check other seasons. Of his appearances under Poch in 13/14 less than half were starts. Same true of 15/16. Had more starts than sub appearances in 14/15 but still started less than half our league games. They were our best 3 seasons so that suggests I'm right in my assertion that he only became one of the first names on the team sheet when we became ****e. Ultimately he wasn't really suitable for any single midfield position due to his shortcomings in certain areas - not good enough defensively to play DM, not enough creativity/progressive passing to play as an AM. And couldn't progress with the ball at his feet enough to be an effective box to box alongside these other shortcomings. So he ended up being one of those recycle the ball midfielders who offered very little elsewhere outside of his party trick (which was a pretty ****ing good party trick it has to be said). Therefore... Bang average outside of his set pieces (well direct FK"s really). But I sense we'll never agree here I'd place him 5th (or possibly even 6th) in best midfield players we had during our recent PL spell.
