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Shea begins short loan to Barnsley with start

Brek Shea Stoke City (Getty Images)

Brek Shea needed to make a move from Stoke City in order to find some playing time, and the Potters granted Shea’s wish by sending him to Barnsley on a short loan that began with a start on Tuesday.

Shea played 75 minutes in Barnsley’s 1-1 tie vs. Birmingham City, starting a one-month loan with his most significant playing time since making the move to England a year ago. Early reviews suggest Shea impressed on Tuesday.

Whether Shea’s loan will go from short loan to a loan for the rest of the season, but it is clear that Barnsley, currently last place in the League Championship, is ready to hand Shea a starting role.

What do you think of the loan? Glad to see Shea getting on the field? Think he returns to Stoke City this year?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. Shea is good only in small doses. In short bursts his risk/reward ratio can be good. As a starter he probably will make too many errors to make it worthwhile. But over 20 minutes you could catch some lightning in a bottle. As Bruce Arena might say, he tries $@&#.

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    • True. Brek Shea has the potential to occasionally put in a brilliant late-game performance and whether to include him on the 23-man roster for Brazil will be one of the biggest and most difficult decisions Klinsmann will have to make. That is, assuming that Brek gets playing time this spring and does reasonably well. If he remains out-of-sight on game days or warming the bench, then I don’t see how inclusion in the Brazil roster could be justified.

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      • in case that comment sounded critical, i would agree with him. unless they’re playing for dc united, i couldn’t care less how (or if) they’re playing for their club team, as long as they perform when they get called up.

        is regular playing time a good indicator of how someone will play for the usmnt? hell yes.

        does not getting minutes mean they won’t play well for the usmnt? hell no.

      • True enough, Nate Dollars. But calling up Brek Shea for the Gold Cup when he had not made the bench for his club for months is one thing, but calling him up for the World Cup is completely different. And if Klinsmann has chosen 22 players on the final call in May without yet naming a Brek Shea who had not played in games since January 28 for Barnsley, then my gut feeling is that Klinsmann would use that last valuable spot for someone who has been playing regularly and well at the club level. But maybe Shea will surprise us and do well at Barnsley and return to Stoke and do great in coming months.

    • I remember when he first went to Stoke people were worried Pulis would use him as a left back. Looking back it’d kind of been nice to have a left back with his speed, size and strength in the US pool. Didn’t he start off as a LB at Dallas?

      He played injured pretty much his entire last year at Dallas, then got suspended and so on. So this will really be his first serious run of matches in about 2 years. It’ll be nice to kind of see where he is actually at.

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      • He did play some at LB while in Dallas. Hydman usely deployed him as LM. I recall that Shea played LB for the generation adidas team from during a small preseason tournament. Maybe a switch to Defense wouldn’t be to bad for him.

      • Hyndman did it, allegedly, to let Brek develop some perspective on wing play.

        And what better way to do that than by defending against wingers?

        His play at wing got better afterwards.

        It’s one reason you see so many left backs who started out as wingers or midfielders.

        Robbie Rogers is another one who might be better as a left back.

  2. Shea is big, strong and fast. He is also a bit limited in his skill set. He will be taken to task for bad first touches and his seeming inability to know when to play safe and when to take chances. His default seems to be to take a chance every time, that is something that deprives his team of possession too often in situations where his teammates are not in position to defend. Those things can be fixed and I hope he does improve them. Still for the USMNT, he does have that big, strong, fast and fearless (a critic might say reckless) thing going for him that seems to be lacking in the other choices; he can be a useful in the right situation.

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    • Dennis,

      “Shea is big, strong and fast. He is also a bit limited in his skill set.”

      Chicharito has a limited skill set but proved that even so you can score at the highest level.

      At this point Shea is intriguing to managers, especially JK for one reason only.

      If he is on, he can disrupt a defence .

      “ big, strong and fast” is enough to do that if you have enough other skill to score and Shea has shown that he has “enough other skill” to do that , however limited that skill may be.

      As an attacking player Shea can do the same thing any number of times and while a defender may stop it 99 percent of the time, Shea only has to break it once. This is where the speed, size and strength come in. For however long he goes at a defender he can go at him relentlessly.

      He may be dumb, though I doubt it, ( after all who is getting paid a lot of money to play soccer here, Brek or one of us?) but that is okay as I want him to do only one thing, keep running at the defense.

      That also opens up things for other attackers. Think of the burner wide receiver that you send deep every once in a while just to keep the defense honest or occasionally blow the top off of it.

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  3. Right now, Shea doesnt make the final roster for Brazil, but he may be one of those who fly w/ the team in the event of injury, I think EJ was among that group in 2010 but Herc ended up taking the final slot

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  4. The fact that we’re seriously considering Brek Shea for the World Cup team tells you all you need to know about the state of the US attack from the wings. Barring some resolute defending/goalkeeping and some incredible counterattacking, I can’t see how the US will survive the group stage.

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    • Shea is not a starter but can be effective coming on in the 75th-80th min using his speed and running at tired defenders in the scorching heat.

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  5. Eh. He has a lot more upside than Robbie Findley, but much less consistency.
    I guess he’ll back up Eddie Johnson and come on for a spark when we’re down.

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    • You know, I started to say that Shea did well despite not knowing his teammates but actually given his style he is probably better off doing it his own way anyway.

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  6. A lot riding on this loan stint for Shea. If he gets some PT, he’s on the plane to Brazil. Jurgen admires him a lot.

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    • Do you mean “playing time” as in “playing well?” Just playing and not looking good is not going to cut it for the nationals.

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      • In the EPL and even for Barnsley, a team fighting relegation, if you are not playing well you will not get a lot of “playing time”.

      • Yes, that;s why I wrote “even for”. Barnsley is in the relegation zone and getting relegated from the Championship is just about as dire as dropping from the EPL.

        The point being if Shea doesn’t play well they won’t let him stay on the field,

    • The coach didn’t quite see it that way.

      “Brek Shea came into the team and had a fantastic 70 minutes or so. He’ll be a big threat for us going forward.

      “We only got his name on the team sheet at two minutes to two!”

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      • What manager whose team are rock bottom of a league, pays Money to loan a premier league player, starts him, will come out and say he was shite when asked about him? None.

      • Sure first 5-10 minutes he was lively got a cross or two into the box but poor final ball on the cross. Very poor actually. Birmingham were awful at the back and should have conceded both times if Shea’s ball had been better. So much so that they moved him to the right to try to cut inside. Which he did twice the rest of the game. Both times he was with no pressure on the edge of the box and drilled both shots wide. His first touches were poor and the Birmingham fans were even laughing at how poor he became after 10 minutes. Barnsley bout about 200 fans maximum. I was at the game the stats can deceive. He was poor. If that’s a World Cup level play the Germans are laughing

      • According to the Daily Mail’s match report, Shea had at least one shot on target, so apparently you weren’t watching very closely. So much for being at the game. Maybe a pint or two less at the pub before the match next time, eh?

    • Baloney. I checked out several Barnsley supporter sites, and they all had positive things to say. Looking at the feed, he had 2 shots and 2 crosses that lead to goal opportunities. Not bad for a debut.

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    • no no no, guys, didn’t you hear? forget what everybody else reported–jack was at the game! and he heard some of the other team’s fans making fun of brek!

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    • I wasn’t at the game, but I watched it on the Barnsley website. Brek was very good considering signing at 2 AM that morning and not knowing any of his teammates’ names or positions. Should have had an assist from one of his shots, and could have had a couple more. He was rusty and had poor touch, but that has been his MO since his injury and lack of playing time over the past couple years. Once he is playing and shakes that rust, he’ll be a force again.

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  7. Ok, gotta admit…our Championship USMNT lineup isn’t too shabby:

    -Lichaj—Whitbread—Gooch—Spector

    ———-D. Williams ——Ream———

    –Ariyibi———Holden——-Shea—–

    ——————Holmes—————–

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