I loved Dirk. non stop, all action guy. the only thing missing that stopped him being a great striker was pace. with good pace he could have been near Torres as a Liverpool striker. still imo a good player
He never had any quality about him, people say if they work hard then fans will like you but I disagree, I want to see actual ability before work rate.
Well apparently Mario Balotelli has tonnes of natural ability, hows that going? Zlatan too, want him in your team when he doesn't do anything for the team. Without work rate whats the point in ability? It can't be used without working hard.
I would love Ibra in my team haha. Give me eleven players with brilliant ability over eleven players with a brilliant work rate any day.
Thought we saw that last Sunday when we played City... Didn't work out too well for the brilliant ability team
What Biscan said, we currently have a hard working team that will beat that talented side. Work ethic will always win in a team sport. The key is to find the real talented hard workers; aka Suarez, Tevez, Sanchez, etc to compliment that work ethic.
That's not true either though; plenty of hard-working sides have been relegated. A certain amount of ability has to be there. At the end of the day, any player is going to be a combination of ability and work ethic. A lot of one will not compensate for a complete lack of the other. The question is where you draw the line on each, and whether an excess in one can compensate for a slight deficit in the other.
I edited as I realised someone could pick up on that. We're obviously not talking about eleven long distance runners vs football players, they can all play otherwise they wouldn't be professionals. I would not pick a player purely because they work hard but it's a critical ability they need to have.
Work ethic is even more important in our current setup. Pressing, movement and interchanging doesn't work if you have a passenger. IMO, its why Mario hasn't been involved as much. He's been working harder in more recent appearances but Brod will know like everyone else that it won't take much for Mario to return to his lazy ways.
I would like to add 'game intelligence' to your comments. Ability, Work Ethic, Intelligence are the holy trinity for all football managers. Mario does have ability, lots of it but he lacks in the other two. Some players can get by on Intelligence and Ability alone at the highest level....and aging players sometimes cannot work as hard (that's not to say they didn't used to have a good work ethic) but get by on the other two.
But if you had the choice of 11 players with hard work rate but no ability and 11 players with ability and no work rate, ability would win every time.
If they had absolutely 0 work rate, then wouldn't they just stand still and not do anything? Then the ones with absolutely no ability would presumably fluke a goal at some point.
So you wouldn't sign players likes Silva, Mata, Messi, Berbatov, Ibra because they don't work hard enough?
Workrate is often used to compliment a player who offers little else. It's why Lallana, Henderson, Kuyt are so highly thought of - because it's hard to see what else they offer. That's not to discredit those playerrs - they are solid options but they will never be top class. In order to succeed, these players have to play with top quality players. Look at Milner - he's a workhorse. A very good workhorse who is underrated. But he would not succeed in our team because there are no top class players around him.
