As I've said many times on this thread, why is Hazard being the one judged on goals? Bergkamp was an average goal scorer and based on stats Kevin Phillips was better than him, based on stats Lampard and Gerrard were better than Iniesta and Xavi. Luis Figo never got more than 14 goals in a season and only scored twice in a major international tournament (both in group stage) yet I never saw this similar systematic downplaying of him.Absolutely no surprise he has flopped in Spain, something I predicted and the injuries are just being used as an excuse now.
Wanted to pick up on some points from previous pages;
World cup 2018 - Chelsea fan actually claimed he was the best player at WC 2018.Just one of numerous comments to backup how overrated this guy is. Before someone starts hyping him getting 2nd in the best player award, do one, Forlan won it over Sneijder and Villa and Messi winning in 2014 was a joke as well. These awards are often based on popularity and hold little merit. That WC was woeful but even at that if you believe someone who scored 2 goals against Tunisia(one being a penalty) and a third goal in a friendly third place play-off was deserving of best player, you're either biased or need help. On actual performances he didn't even deserve top 5. Hazard won the EL POTY as well when he started about 4 games in the competition, these awards are a joke.
Flat track bully - Whilst he was not completely a flat track bully his record against the top 6 is overstated. 9 were penalties, another was from a penalty rebound. He also played over 80 games against those sides. Giroud has 20 goals against the same sides, he a big game superstar as well then?
Champions league - 9 CL goals in 53 games. 5 are penalties. Of the 4 non penalty goals, one was at home to Maribor in the 90th minute in a 6-0 win. Another was an 87th minute goal in a 3 nil win against Schalke. The only time he did anything of note at the highest level in football was the 2 goals in the 3-3 game vs Roma. He's the only player I can think of who's disastrous CL performances and return is completely ignored.
PL great - Will Hazard be classed as a PL great, yes. Is he near the top in regards to comparing all the PL greats? Not a chance. Hazard will always be a talented player who never showed near enough at the top level whilst also going missing in seasons. Says it all that his best season was 18/19 and when you dig deep into his return you find that 25 of his 31 goals/assists were against the bottom 10 sides it gives merit that he was more of a flat track bully than people like to admit. Dig a little deeper than those 6 against top 10 sides include an overhit pass that landed to Kante vs City and a corner in the same game. One against Wolves was a deflected goal from a simple Hazard pass to RLC.
To conclude Hazard was a talented player, but he was not consistently world class in my eyes, his CL and European career is weak. His International career is hardly stellar either. Will always be overrated to me when people claim he was top 3 in the world, my own cousin once claimed he was BPITW ahead of Ronaldo and Messi, jesus christ! In 20 years time nobody will be looking back and claiming Hazard was better than the likes of Robben, Ribery or even Neymar or up there as one of the best, which shows he's not near as good as PL fans especially Chelsea ones believe.
You say 9 goals from a penalty (against the big six). Well 5 of them he won himself and in 3 of them he was almost certainly going to score from open play had it not been for the intervention (Koscielny and Jones fouling him as the last man and the famous Ox handball).
They're many things better in the modern game but one thing that has made the game worse is this obsession with stat padding. If Hazard was greedy and started shooting when he was in even semi good positions yes he'd have scored more, he'd have probably got around 25-30 a season but he would have been a lesser player in terms of all round package but even more tragically rated higher than what he was. Theres many goals we scored where "Hazards way" produced a goal where if he decided to take a low percentage shot it would have likely been a waste of a chance, two prime examples of the top of my head is his assist to Ramires in the 5-3 cup game against United and one of Diego Costa's goals when he scored a hattrick against Swansea.
He's also had many elite level matches where he didn't score or assist. To cherry pick a few examples that same Swansea game Diego got the treble, United in 2017 (where Morata scored the only goal of the game), that mad 6-3 at Everton, Stoke away when Morata got a hattrick, Atleti at home in the last group game under Conte, many games in the Mourinho title winning season post January where frankly if it wasn't for him and Courtois we'd have probably lost our top four spot let alone the title.
One thing I will give you is the CL, I won't deny his record should be better in that but domestically whenever he was needed he more often than not came up clutch. He played four cup finals with us, won three of them and was the main if not sole reason in two (Baku and the 2018 FA Cup final), he stood up and got us the title in 2015 when the form of all his teammates bar his fellow countryman totally collapsed (look at what happened the following season when Courtois was injured and Hazard was playing through a back injury for reference), he was also the man delivering the goods in the 2017 run in when Spurs started "putting the pressure on", Costa suddenly started playing really really badly and Hazard (and too an extent Pedro) carried the slack. It wasn't to the same extreme level as 2015 (where literally everyone else around him fell off a cliff) but he still stood up when we needed a talisman and brung another title home.
Also he didn't "go missing in season's", he had one bad season when he played through an injury for half of it, and before anyone goes down the rabbit hole of claiming it was an excuse to justify his season, Guus Hiddink confirmed it was true not just in words (article below) but actions (slowly phasing him back off the bench when the injury flared up badly shortly into his tenure). Not only that it's not exactly unique for Mou to make players play through injury.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...d-s-dip-injury-best-insists-Guus-Hiddink.html
Also another thing that has to be factored is his teammates and system. While his support cast weren't as poverty as some suggest he never had the consistently world class teammates along side him that some of the players that were supposedly "on another level". Cesc was played deeper, Costa was his one world class teammate alongside him but he didn't have the technical skills to combine with Hazard to the maximum level, Eto'o and Pedro did but they were past their very very best selves that you guys enjoyed, he also didn't have an elite attacking fullback to combine with and take men away from him, compare that to say Liverpool now where Salah and Mane have Robertson and Trent to combine with and make decoy runs for them (not to mention the presence of each other meant one couldn't be so tightly marked) the majority of Hazards career he had a right footed Azpi at LB who for all his fantastic defensive ability lacks going forward on his natural side let alone his left. Those factors meant teams could double sometimes triple up on Hazard knowing we didn't have a similar level game changer elsewhere, at say Bayern you couldn't do that with Ribbery because well Robben and Lewandowski.
Also he played under largely pragmatic managers who's style stylistically oppose his, the one time he did have a stylistic match manager wise was Sarri and even he was cautious in his tactics with possession (and I'd wager a big part of him being comfortable doing that was knowing Hazard would do the business and he did). Many big games in his time he had to deal with scraps and the way we set up at times meant to make a proper impact he literally had to score a solo goal, Conte even had him as a target man on occasions FFS.
So no he's not as good as Messi, Ronaldo ofcourse not, but he was a talisman for the 2nd most successful club in England in the period he was here (and the only team above us on that score had numerous elite attackers) and times carried us on his back from an offensive POV. I can say with near certainty we don't win those titles without him (especially the one under Mou) and very likely don't pick up many of the cups in that period either, thanks to him we had a relitevely smooth transition from the old guard atleast domestically.
So in conclusion, if you fancy someone who will shoot twenty times a game to pad out his tally then no he's not for you, but he was an elite game changer for us in a time our team were lacking in them after losing all our ones from the previous era near enough at the same time.
