For what it’s worth, my own personal opinion of Gomez is that if everybody else played at his speed then he’d be a world beater. As it is, he is too slow in thought & body to succeed in this league.
I also don’t think in a million years that he’s capable of playing the central midfield role where this slowness would get exploited even more than it does when he plays in the attacking midfielder/deep lying forward role.
I think he’s a good player to have in a squad & can fill in well for the odd game but when he becomes a regular starter it takes something away from Latics performances coz I think the system works best when there’s 2 nippy blokes a la Maloney & Moses to stretch defences. As it is when Gomez gets the ball it seems to slow play down.
That said, I don’t think he deserves the stick he gets from some quarters – I put it down to the McCulloch/Neil Roberts effect. The majority of the Latics faithful will warm to a limited skill, 100%er & grafter type player than they will to the likes of Gomez & Gary Teale who (no matter what they do/did) were perceived as “bottlers” & “afraid to get stuck in”
