Three reasons to offload him
1) He doesn’t suit Baxter
Like it not, Chiefs fans, Sundowns co-coach Manqoba Mngqithi was correct in August 2021 when he said that Nurkovic may not suit Baxter’s style of football. He revealed: “On Nurkovic, because he’s a box striker, and if they want to play a counter-attacking game, then it means he must come out from the halfway line — and I don’t think that is his strength. And if they want to play a counter-attacking
game, then Nurkovic will forever be late into the box.” Those comments were predicated on Nurkovic being used as a central striker in Baxter’s transition-based style. Instead, he was placed as something of a left winger (‘left split striker’ to be more accurate) and, as a player lacking pace and dribbling ability, he was never going to shine there. He was spending most
matches not getting any real touches in the box or in the middle of the goal.
The fact is that Baxter has not got the best out of Nurkovic so far and is unlikely to change his preferred style of play for an individual player.
2) He can’t stay fit!
A second possible reason why Chiefs may strongly consider selling or releasing the Serbian is due to his recent injury record. In his first season at the club under Middendorp’s periodisation training, the striker featured in 31 of the team’s 35 matches. He only missed four matches, two due to suspension and two because of concussion. He was only substituted off twice in 29 starts, playing the full match the other 27 starts. Prior to the 2020/21 campaign, Nurkovic had to go for groin surgery and missed the first 11 matches of Hunt’s reign. In the end, he appeared (from the start or as a sub) in 32 of Amakhosi’s 49 matches last term but was substituted 10 times and only played 15 full matches. This season, Nurkovic went for surgery on an injury to the cartilage in his knee. He explained that he picked up the injury
If we compare the number of crosses in his first season to now, the frequency and quality of these deliveries is down. It is clearly something which was worked on in training a lot more when Middendorp was in charge than it is now. One caveat to that is the fact that Parker has scored two fine headers this season from Njabulo Blom and Billiat crosses and Nurkovic would have thrived off quality service like that. Simply put, the Soweto giants used to load balls into the 18-yard box for their Serbian striker (and Castro), but now they’re much more selective of when to cross and when to pass instead. This would be different maybe if Keagan Dolly was used down the left flank, but he is running riot on the right, so there’s no way Baxter is going to change that just for Nurkovic.