I agree with everything apart from his pace; he really had lost that IMO, but was still a good player.I think we miss this guy tremendously. I think people forget what an elite level player he was for most of his career because when he came to us we weren't doing great as a team and he was wing back (though personally I thought he was pretty decent and thought he was harshly judged by many of our fans.) I also think due to his age he was only ever seen as a stop gap which is fair enough. But despite his age, he was still a great athlete and most crucially still had a bit of pace. I think he's the best winger we have at the club and I think had he been 24, then Ange would have seen him as a big part of our future and seen him as a key player. If he was fit our attack would look way less impotent. Our wide players see so much of the ball and do so little with it. The impact of Perisic's absence has gone massively under the radar imo. Madders, Bentancur and VDV's injuries have naturally been highlighted as massive reasons for our recent struggles, but, to me, Perisic is a bit like Gio and that he's much better than we've seen in the pre Ange era. We have big problems in the attacking third and he's an elite level attacker, even at 34. He'd have made so much more of the opportunities Johnson had to put in decent balls last night.
What a shame. I genuinely thought he could have made himself a regular first teamer - arguably has the best delivery in the squad.Only just seeing Ange's latest comments about Perisic and his injury, confirms what we suspected at the time but unlikely to play for us again, really disappointing.
"No, he's working hard to be fair to Ivan. He's obviously got some national team commitments he wants to get back to as soon as possible," Postecoglou said.
"Again, he's been a significant loss for us. I thought this year he was going to be a really significant contributor because of his experience and we saw that in the first few games because of the way he impacted games.
"But yeah, he won't ... he's unlikely to play for us again."
Wow, really was not expecting him to move this window. Would be excellent to get him off the wage bill.
It’s a really shame that he got injured as I like him as a player and I think he could have been a big help to us on and off the pitch. But getting his 180k p/w off the wage bill would be incredibly helpful if realistically he won’t play for us again.Good, yet quite sad, news. Like Ghost says above, getting him off the wage bill might help us sign someone else.
Would free up a foreign spot too