Pizy

The lack of pace in 3 of our 4 wide areas here is brutal. None of Azpi, Alonso, or Ziyech can run. And CHO may as well not be on the pitch. Brighton can be had on the counter but our counter attack specialists (Werner, Havertz, Pulisic) are on the bench. And Lamptey is literally unstoppable with our current personnel. Flying down that right side basically uncontested.

Alonso……..

We’re making Brighton look like the big team here. They’re just hustling us off the ball repeatedly. Our players have such poor touch and passing ability it’s infuriating. Ziyech, CHO, and Mount have been invisible AGAIN.

Azpi given the ball away 4 times already. On what should be simple passes.

Has Lukaku had a single touch yet? Second match against Brighton in a row where they look far more comfortable on the ball than we do. Think about that. Brighton play better football than Chelsea…

If Rom has another poor game and doesn’t score today I think the fans will start booing him, tbh.

*sigh* Expect us to get pressed and made to look shite again here. Wtf is the deal with Havertz? He was great in his last start and now is riding the bench.

At this point I’m calling bullshit. This sounds like Barca leaked things to make him look like a greedy cunt because they want him to sign for cheaper.

Lukaku may very well go on to score a decent number of goals this season and if he stays on past this season he’ll score many more. He will actually contribute in a meaningful way despite his glaring weaknesses. Kepa is the most expensive goalie ever and is nothing more than a cup and injury backup. But actually, I somehow completely forgot that Kepa was actually very solid in that first season here. He just gradually crumbled. There was a time there where he displaced DDG in the Spain XI and looked great. So with that being said I’ll revise my pick. It’s Drinkwater. Paid £30m+ and he made like 2 appearances. The most “wait, did that actually happen?” transfer ever. We may as well have lit 30m on fire. 😂

Kepa is far and away the worst signing in the clubs history. Nobody else comes close, really. Probably followed then by Drinkwater and Bakayoko. Lukaku isn’t even in the conversation yet.

Tbh, I think if you were to drop Lukaku into the Bayern team or the Dortmund team or PSG he’d destroy those leagues just like he did in Italy. A quality goal scorer on the team which has BY FAR the best squad in their league is going to feast. Lukaku would score 35 goals in the Bayern or PSG teams. In Serie A/Bundesliga/Ligue 1 there are only 2-3 teams that can even compete on the pitch with Bayern/PSG etc. In the PL anyone can beat anyone on a given weekend (City apart).

Jesus Christ, I forgot he’s back. It couldn’t happen, could it? Imagine if we still had Lamptey on our books. 😔 Even with a fully fit James and Chilly he would’ve got plenty of minutes this season. Now he’ll end up at City, United, or Arse and haunt us for a decade.

It has reached the point where I dread whoever it is that starts at left fullback. Back 3 or back 4, I’m nervous. We play a back 3 with Alonso out there and he’ll get ripped apart by pace and if we play a back 4 with Sarr there he’ll get spun around and give away a million free kicks like he has in recent games because he’s not used to it. Much like City, Brighton are a high energy side who are excellent on the ball as we witnessed just a couple of weeks ago. I’d personally go for the same midfield pair that was actually excellent against City. Jorginho can come in later if we’re in control. We need the legs of both Kova and Kante. Havertz, Wener, and Mount front 3.

I guess in terms of numbers he may have. But at least against sides we’re vastly superior to Lukaku still scares people. He’s a player other teams have to game plan for and when in form he can still bully defenders. Tammy was super soft and easy to play against. I’d rather have Rom if given the choice between the two. But yeah, we should have given Tammy 1 more year and made a play for Haaland this summer. I don’t think it was crazy to put him on that level during his Inter days. He genuinely looked top class in Italy. Unfortunately we’re finding out that Serie A is much weaker than the PL and it made him look like he improved since he left United.

At the bare minimum if Lukaku can at least bang in 10 goals against lower half opposition and help secure us a comfortable top 4 position then this signing won’t have been a disaster. I don’t think he’s 100% unsalvageable like some of you do. Against sides like City we’ll just have to find different solutions in attack. Because like him or not we’re likely stuck with him.

That’s why I said most, not all. I definitely do remember you and others being against the move. But almost every top pundit, former player, and the people who covered him for a living all agreed that it was a great signing at the time. There’s a reason we were a popular pick for the league title and I remember Neville saying he’d be top scorer. A lot of evidence suggested that he was a good fit. But there was also evidence that he might not be and that has turned out to be the case.

This is a good take in hindsight but at the time the Lukaku signing was sensible and most people were fine with it. Not all, but most. The rest of the squad looked great but were missing an elite goal scorer. Lukaku was the best goal scorer available. Haaland was impossible and a player like Vlahovic was probably seen as too big of a risk coming off of 1 breakout season. Not as though there were 5 great options and we chose Lukaku. We could’ve waited a year I suppose, but Tuchel and the club clearly thought we were right in the cusp of being a title winning side but needed to act right away by getting a striker immediately.

It’s actually kind of insane that we’re so far into the window and are not even close to bringing in any cover for either wingback position. It’s as though the club hierarchy just assumed they’d be able to bully Lyon into letting a key player come back to us and had no other plan in case that didn’t work. How many more times do we have to see Azpi and Alonso get torched down the flanks before we do something? It’s probably going to happen again tomorrow with Lamptey. We going to wait until deadline day and panic loan some shit player?

He’s shit.

I would damn sure hope it’s a loan. He’s a mediocre player and is nearing 30. Absolutely not the sort of player we’d sign permanently.

Watching Lamptey against Alonso again should be fun…

I said before and just after we brought him in that it wouldn’t be the worst thing if Lukaku could bang them in against shit teams. I figured the rest of the attacking players would make up for him being subpar against the biggest teams. But none of our attacking players look any better than they did last season when they were mostly poor. Lukaku should certainly be enough for us to finish top 4. But if we have any ambitions of ever finishing above City in the near future we won’t do it with him. But what do you do with him? Unless we are so desperate to move him on that we’ll take a massive loss nobody can afford his fee + wages. He is basically the outfield version of Kepa. We’re stuck with him.

Chiesa would’ve of course been the ideal player but he is out long term now. That’s the profile of player we need to target. Wide players who will get on the ball and sprint into attack with the intent to score or at last cause chaos.

We need to somehow identify some top class wide players who can score goals. Find the next players in the Mané/Salah/prime Pedro/Robben mould. And then build around Havertz up top. Fuck all these frail, dainty, soft wide players with mouse mentality like we have. We need aggressive, athletic guys who put unbelievable pressure on teams. That may be the only way we can haul City in and it’s what Liverpool have done these last few years.

Lukaku is getting all the heat and he was indeed terrible overall but Ziyech and CP were shocking as well. Ziyech’s total inability to beat anyone with the ball was brutally exposed today. He’s slow as fuck. And his fabled passing that we saw at Ajax feels like a distant memory. He couldn’t complete simple passes. Pulisic is a once in 5-8 games player. He’s essentially a worse version of Willian. I’d be perfectly happy to see us sell every forward player we currently have this summer except for Kai. Lukaku, Ziyech, Pulisic, and Werner can all go and I wouldn’t feel bad at all. Shouldn’t be difficult at all to find buyers for the latter 3. Lukaku is a massive anchor unless Inter or someone else take him on loan.