Player Review
80 - Normal
I was quite excited to use this card this year. The combination of height, pace and decent defensive stats made Joe Gomez look like a great CB for a decent starter squad, especially with a sentinel chem style. A poor man's Van Dijk I imagined. I was amazed to find out he only cost about 5k during EA access. I expected him to cost a bit closer to 10k at launch so in my mind, I thought I was getting a sure bargain of a CB that would be in my squad for quite a few weeks but oh boy was I wrong. Now with defending even harder this year, I wasn't expecting miracles from Joe here. I was just expecting someone solid enough to make the easy interceptions and blocks, while also pulling off the occasional tackle I managed to time right. But this was rarely ever the case. Joe was utterly useless in my defence. He never won headers as you really notice that low jumping, never made blocks and missed the easiest tackles and interceptions, even the ones I was pretty sure I had timed perfectly. He was out of position a lot and never got close to his man off the ball, resulting in many free chances for my opponents. His play on the ball was also lazy and lethargic, maybe because of the 79 reactions and lack of agility and balance, I don't know. He was constantly outshone individually by what eventually became my very solid CB pairing of Lindelof and Bailly. The difference was even much clearer when I played him alongside my loan VVD to compare the 2. It's important to note your experiences might be different from mine, because I have played against Joe Gomez a lot already and he has been immense for some of my opponents, even though I've been able to exploit his known weaknesses most times I've faced him. I wouldn't recommend this card (except of course because it'd be good for me if most people had him so I could score some easy goals).
Height I guess
Pace too
Defending
Defending
Defending
And oh before I forget, defending