Tomo

I'm hoping he will rotate the four depending on tactics/opponents.

That game can be played in all angles, what does it say about La Liga when CR7's best goal scoring season in Italy is still behind his six best scoring season's his Spain? What does it say about The PL that Salah's best tally in Italy is still four behind his worst tally at Liverpool? I can't believe as someone who doesn't actually want him that I've been resorted to defend him but that is such a selective take.

Only you could try and pass off good recruitment as a bad thing. The bolded bit is hilarious btw given you gave Lampard no leeway for losing Eden Hazard (not to mention Kante was injury stricken for half the season).

That was said when RLC returned from injury, when we signed Havertz and when we appointed Tuchel. I'll believe it when I see it.

That would be typical if he misses the one match in the first two months that is tailor made for him.

I literally forgot about him leaking United's training performance data as one of his final acts before he left. So after nearly two days of performing all levels of mental gymnastics on my own brain to try and convince myself i'm wrong/overreacting i get the biggest possible reminder of why i'm so skeptical.

He's a Leeds fan (Stuart Dallas pretty much confirmed as much when talking about a chat they had after an international game). He obviously won't be going to Leeds despite his fandom but given our history with them i wouldn't be surprised if that worked against us, if i was a worldclass player and Chelsea were a midtable club my fandom wouldn't be enough to bring me here but it would certainly prevent me from joining any club we have bad blood with.

Haaland at City i feel would be a classic case of great player under the wrong manager (for him), like Pep himself with Ibra or Fergie with Veron. If he was to come to England i feel Liverpool would be the perfect team for him with Firmino and Mane declining but there's no chance will FSG cough up the money unless they there's teams stupid enough to fund it for them by spending big on one/both of those two.

This argument is ridiculous. Ofcourse he would have been criticised more than Mendy for the reason that he makes those type's of errors a lot more regularly, for the same reason Cech got a free pass for errors while Turnbull got deserved pelters when he did the same. It's not double standards, it's credit in the bank.

Wasn't word of the grapevine re Kepa that Sarri picked him via a recommendation by Pepe Reina (initially as the latters succesor at Naples but then targeted him again here)? I'd like to think we haven't deffered to Reina for this one.

If on Amber (as Italy is) then yes. https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-fully-vaccinated-travellers-from-us-and-eu-can-come-to-england-scotland-and-wales-without-isolation-12370421

Won't he be able to do the same thing Tuchel did? Ala quarentine apart from when working. Unless he's fully vaccinated which makes him exempt.

This is why I was confident even if we signed no one. We look unbelievably well coached.

I really hope so, because that will mean the club has benefitted. A lot of my skepticism is for two reasons, his rage quits at us before and United (compare that to how the guy in your profile picture embraced and beat his competition, night and day) and his big game record. He has a chance to somewhat silence me on the latter critic with our early games, fingers crossed he does.

Agreed. I don't want Lukaku here one bit but people are starting to go well too far with this now.

CBA with this back and forth. Time to try and convince myself I'm wrong and hope I actually am.

But like I said, If we really want to go down the route of signing someone we think can guarantee goals fine, I'll happily compromise at sourcing a Mane/Salah/Jota type (even if I think Werner, Mount and especially Havertz will score a lot more next season). But like Jas said the reason we create so many chances to waste is because our players are all heavily involved in the build up, since we've moved Kai to false 9 (from the Everton game) the majority of our performances have been very good, when teams are playing shit but get undeserved results for a while because one player keeps coming up clutch eventually it catches up (ala Arsenal with Aubameyang, Spurs with Kane and us with Hazard under Mourinho) so why can't that also work in reverse? Fox in the box strikers have a habit of making their teams worse overall even if they offer a good goal record, even great ones like RVN (United only won 1 title in 5 years with him and 3 in a row either side of him). The game has long moved on from them in consistent winning teams.

As much as I don't want Lukaku he will never be that bad. Our version of Torres was league 1 standard at best, he did not have one single positive attribute to fall back on.

My main frustration is that we are tearing apart a hugely promising system to accommodate him. If we really wanted to go down the rabbit hole of buying a player who we think will guarantee us goals then we should absolutely be going for a wide forward in the Salah/Mane/Jota/Sterling mould. He has to score atleast 30 until he even begins to justify the compromises to our overall style that's going to be made.

Yep and when it looked like it was going to be no one we were apparently standing still and throwing under Tuchel under a bus. Tbh I'm half glad I can now express my stance from a position of strength without it potentially appearing like I'm blindly defending the club decision making, which is I am that sure of Havertz as a f9 i'm indifferent to signing Haaland let alone anyone else.

I don't know what I find more frustrating, the fact that we're trying to sign Lukaku or that people are suddenly agreeing with me (that we shouldn't sign for the sake of it) purely because we are about to do it. "Sign someone anyone" Ok "No not him"

I'm fully against Lukaku but even I am laughing at the theory he will be worst than Torres. Rom will have some uses, our version of Torres was the worst striker in the league.

Lukaku last season scored less goals then Werner the year before he joined us. Lukaku last season in the PL scored less goals than Havertz the year before he joined us.

@Mana somethings just cropped up in my head that's made me so curious I can't resist asking. If you think our squad is so shit, why did you want Lampard sacked?

And that alone should make this a deal breaker.