The Garden of Eden Hazard. Once though to be a world class player and among the very best, and now there are doubts to his abilities, and I've been at the forefront of criticising him.
As of writing, this season, Hazard has yet to score a single goal. People may point to Oxlade-Chamberlain and other wingers who don't bang them in, but provide the assists. My two responses to that is firstly; Hazard has maybe three assists to his name with halfway of the season gone and he is known as a goalscoring attacking winger. The very fact that he's not managed to score a single goal all season shows a drastic depreciation.
But I'm fine with that. It happens. I'm not going to beat up a really good player having a bad season. Surely, I am free to criticize and wonder why they are doing so badly. But I won't go much further than that. When it becomes a problem though is a player not giving enough of an effort and in my view, faking injury.
That may seem controversial and I have read that the "injuries" he's had in games, resulting on the man himself substituting himself off have in fact been genuine. The way I see it, the knocks he received were not that intense, and I see no reason why he couldn't play through a little bit of pain. If he was desperate to help his team and get out of his rut, he'd stick it out a bit longer until the pain was too unbearable. His decision to take himself out of the game was too quick for my liking.
Henry even said that during his playing career, he cannot remember a time where he was not carrying a little niggle or playing through some bit of pain. It comes with the territory and you can never be in a situation where you are completely healthy in a game. You can even look at Sanchez who will only stop playing if a freightload weighing eighty anvils came crashing down on his ankles.
It's about determination.
Maybe Hazard needs this. He needs someone to be a bit aggressive with him to get out a reaction. Hiddink is not that kind of manager as he's more of a peace merchant. But one of the senior players should take Hazard aside and remind him of his qualities and tell him how much the team needs him, and the only way for him to get back to his best is by grinding and playing through some pain. Nothing can ever come easy or be put on a golden platter for you in this world.
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HH
