He hadnt played support striker in his career...your post only focuses on his position at this club amd not his regular positions of left midfield and...centre midfield.
He played a lot of games in centre midfield for Reading for example.
Im not sure why you would even include an undercurrent of rudeness in your post when you obviously dont have any knowledge on the player before joining the club...
Credibility / strawman arguments...get in the bin.
This is funny. I‘m willing to indulge for a bit, so let‘s break it down. I admit I didn’t watch every Reading, Shrewsbury, Crewe, Hoffenheim, Spurs, Swansea, Iceland and Everton game he’s ever played in. But this is what I remember from reading up on him before he joined EFC.
And, in case you or anyone else misses it, the key point is this: just because a player *has played* in a position doesn’t mean it’s their position. Again, context matters.
In his career he’s played the majority of his games at attacking midfield. Ie the number 10 role (or arguably 8). This includes ‘second striker‘ because of the way he plays. Extremely rarely he’s played false nine when without a partner. All his clubs have recognised this, but most have struggled to put him in that position at some point for one reason or another. And Sigurdsson himself has said that’s his preferred position.
Left wing: He played some matches at left wing for Spurs, when they couldn’t fit him into the team, at Swansea for about half a season when he was largely supporting the striker from the left in attack then moving back in to make a compact 5, and at Everton in the Allardyce season. Out of all those, I’d say only Swansea is representative of him being played there in a settled structure. The rest were patchwork or experimentation, a lot like his position right now. The proof of that is that the experiments didn’t last very long, despite him ‘doing a job’. And at Spurs, he himself put the ‘failure’ down to being played out of position.
Central midfield: rarely, if ever. The fact that you‘re harking back to a period ten years ago, in the Championship, says it all.
I’m sure some appearance stats website will have this detail for you.
But the funny thing is, all that is completely irrelevant; my points being quite simple: 1) central midfield in a two at a team aiming for Europe is not his position — i.e. he is out of position — but he’s doing an OK job as cover while we have injuries. 2) The tactics need to acknowledge that, by not playing through him and whoever his partner is, if we do want to play with him in a two. 3) And as fans, we should recognise the context, lay off him, and put the negative energy into supporting someone else positively.
It’s not too hard to understand that that’s a *completely different thing* to discussing his long-term future at the club and whether he should be built around (the answer clearly being ‘no’). Give it a go.
