On Hemed, it looks to my eye like he's suffering from a culture shock, trying to adjust to a reasonably good A-League playing level and correspondingly shocking refereeing level. I think by now he's realised he actually has to do more than just turn up to make an impact.
For me, it's not the end result, it's the intent. The intent is not there. He walks around like he barely gives a shark.
I also think we're really missing one thing: pace. Sotirio is frustrating, but he's the only player we have who can run in behind. We're too one paced.
My impression is that he really wants to do well but he just can't get up to speed with this league. To be fair I think he gets pinged for a lot of fouls which the likes of Matt Simon get away with week in week out. Refs seem to come down against him every time he contests a ball, so he tends to spend a lot of time complaining loudly.
On the other hand he shows very little of Hooper's vision, ability to protect the ball under pressure and make that tiny bit of space that big slow strikers need in order to be a goal threat. Defensively there were several times in the last ten minutes that we desperately needed him to show his import credentials and simply kill the ball to give us some breathing space, yet frustratingly he couldn't do it.
This was the Hemed I saw at Charlton. Anonymous. Outplayed by Plymouth Argyle's players, didn't even know he was on the park. There's a reason he's in Aus and not Europe and it has nothing to do with Covid.
I disagree. He's definitely a presence on the park. In his 20 minute stint against the Jets, he twice passed to absolutely no one, giving the ball away. He also caught the attention of the ref once or twice.
I usually give our imports a bit of a break as they usually come right, but this guy is shark.
The gap between his CV and what he's delivered so far for us reminds me of Jeffrey Sarpong ???