Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Héctor Jiménez Joins Crew, Roster at 29

Another player pickup for the Columbus Crew today as Gregg Berhalter does some business with his old boss to pick up Hector Jimenez from the LA Galaxy.

With a $47k a year MLS contract, Jimenez comes to the Crew as one of the most undervalued players in the league.

Last year Jimenez ranked 8th in G+A per 90 minutes played last year among midfielders with a minimum of 900 minutes played.

G+Ap90 : Name
0.91 : Landon Donovan
0.87 : Diego Valeri
0.74 : Diego Fagundez
0.64 : Tim Cahill
0.63 : Javier Morales
0.62 : Joel Lindpere
0.56 : Russell Teibert
0.53 : Hector Jimenez
0.53 : Kelyn Rowe
0.50 : Mauro Rosales
0.49 : Brad Davis
0.49 : Federico Higuain

That's some really good company (better than Higuain) but for some reason Bruce Arena didn't like playing him a full 90. In fact, only one of his 14 starts last year went the distance. Despite making 14 starts and 13 appearances as a sub, Jimenez only played 13.1 (1178) ninety min matches.

Arena clearly used him as a part time player but he took full advantage of it.

Berhalter and team appear to have been doing their homework here. The only question marks might be that that Jimenez was playing with far superior talent with LA than he will be here in Columbus and he was playing with a fairly stable midfield right near his hometown in California.

Jimenez is likely to play a large role with the Crew in 2014.

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