The Skipper

Costa is a much better number 9 than Griezmann.

I feel exactly the same. That hope will always be there.

No one in their sane mind would pay over £10m for a 35 year old player.

Emenalo doesn't decide on these things... He's not on the board.

Can't believe people are berating someone who's clearly very happy to be here. He's genuinely ecstatic about it. Excited for him.

In what sense? This kid has got so much more drive and determination than Josh does, and seems to be a lot more dedicated to proving himself.

This is the dream. Won't ever happen though :D.

We've scored 9 in 4 games, we're scoring again now.

What would be ideal for me is offloading Remy and Falco and bringing in Pato with someone like Robin Van Persie. Costa, RVP, Pato sounds good you know. I'm just an eternal optimist though. Pats at Milan was one of my favourite players. I hope he can be useful for us.

It is. Football is a fickle game. Personally, I've always overlooked Costa's poor start to the season because the team was completely not good enough in general. Same way I'm overlooking Eden's poor form.

He was injured lots throughout the second half of the season last year, so that stopped his momentum. He still had a 1 in 2 goal ratio back then though. He wasn't amazing but he was decent. Not sub par though. I can say Costa is consistent usually because of how consistent he was at Atletico and how he was here last season for the most of it. Now he's gone through a very bad patch for the first time in years... With obvious reasons as to why... It's unfair to call him inconsistent. He's been our most consistent player under Hiddink whether you like that or not. Getting another top striker in to compete with Diego is entirely another argument tbh. I'm not disagreeing with you on that.

You're being a bit short sighted Choo! Costa is a very consistent player, don't take what's been going on earlier this season as proof that he isn't. It's an anomaly really. Costa will still end this season with 15-20 goals and that's impressive considering the season we've had as a club here. During his time here at CFC, apart from before Guus arrived this season, Costa has been a consistent player that has played at a high level. It's unfair to say he hasn't.

There's a difference between cutting him slack and saying that we miss him and need him...

Costa is honestly the better player.

Very true on the last part, but he'd still be a very valuable squad player. He's definitely good enough for that.

How would he be less effective at LB? Whenever he did play LB for us he had a huge impact. Attacking fullbacks are a huge part of the game, and Kenedy could really flourish there. Alaba and Marcelo were not anywhere near World Class at his age either, no one would've had them as the best LBs in the world at the time.

Or we could just give RLC more responsibility. For this season any way. Give him the minutes Ramires would naturally have and see how well he develops?

£25m?! Grab it and run!!!

Fair enough for sticking to your guns Choo, but surely the fact that we're overreliant on Costa has more to do with tactics and the way we set up our team than anything? Costa isn't as limited as Fabregas as a player, he's a very good all round player and can play in lots of different systems because he's got good football IQ. Saying we should sell Costa because we're overreliant on him is like saying we should sell Hazard of last season as well because we relied on him too much. Costa doesn't really harm the team when he's off form unlike someone like Fabregas. I can see this being a valid reason for selling Cesc, not Costa though.

Had a good game yesterday, he'll still be useful as a squad player next season.

You have very low expectations of Matic if you thought he was very good. He was just about average.

His off the ball movement and awareness is awful. God.

Pretty sure the majority of you wanted him sold two or three weeks back haha... Got to love the fickle nature of football!

Ozil applies his talent very well though. An on form Ozil is much more beneficial to a team that an on form Alexis simply because he truly elevates his team mates level of play. Alexis works hard but Ozil hasn't been a liability to his team, he works fairly hard as well.

For me, we need to look at these positions, assuming the players that are already in the XI are in top form: Courtois Azpi - Zouma - (a) - (b) Matic - Fabregas - (c) Willian - Costa - Hazard At (a), I'm looking for a classy ball playing centre back, so someone like Stones would be a good fit. If we bring in Christensen in the future as well who's having some great development at Gladbach then we'd have some excellent young centre backs for the future, with someone like Cahill backing them up. At (b), I really want to see Kenedy have a go there, I believe he has massive potential there if he learns the position well. We also gave Ake out on loan so when he's back, those two can fight for the LB spot. At (c), we have the option to let someone like RLC develop or get in a proper CM. Ramires isn't good enough IMO so I would like to see an improvement on him there. We also need to improve our quality in depth. From now till the end of the season, my starting XI would actually be: Courtois Azpi - Zouma - JT - Kenedy RLC - Cesc - Matic Willian - Costa - Hazard