- Joined
- May 29, 2021
- Messages
- 606
The appearance record is inflated because of the cameos academy kids at Ajax get. Also they're not as good at 17 as they are at 22. Think it's better to look at their last one or two years (VDB played deeper in his last year after De Jong left).
30 goal contributions in a season as a midfielder definitely gets you the serial goalscorer label, which is all I said really. I didn't imply anything by it, other than that he can score goals.
Klaassen is a great goal scorer for Ajax, but their goals/assists aren't very far apart if you consider VDB played in the pivot more often (he played there behind Ziyech at times, while Klaassen never played deep during his first stint) and VDB played less minutes.
One of the reasons we paid 40m euro for him and not for Klaassen or Giakoumakis (you can guess which stat is whose and in which competition):
G A Min 5 3 1433 2 1 1276
''serial goalscorer'' refers to goals specifically, not ''goal contributions'' which also include assists. VDB only achieved double figures in the league once for ajax, those numbers don't look sufficiently high to me to earn the tag of being a serial goalscorer. Considering that this is the dutch league we are talking about which is a much lower level than the premier league. Klaasen achieved double figures four times in the dutch league by comparison.