CHOULO19

Literally everyone has been well below standards. Poor performance so far.

But he's a "Jose-type" player

Watching him for Milan, I can't help but feel very impressed by the level that Jose had him performing at last season. While he was at best average last season, he was still a thousand times better than he's been for Milan. On a different note...

Luis against a team that will park the bus. Whatever are we going to moan about after the match?!

The Iranian nuclear talks are taking less time!

So.....who are we loaning him to next season?

To be fair, he was injured for half of the season and Luiz and Iva had incredible seasons at CB.

Hull have never won at the bridge in the PL so I'm going for a 3-0 win like against Tottenham

I love how that went from extremely confident to very pessimistic in a single sentence!

Yes, and both our attacking and defensive systems are built with a number ten (if you could even call it that) like Willian and Oscar. We would need to alter our pressing system and the dynamics of our movements in the final third if we want to play Cesc there in bigger games. That's exactly my point.

Was it because he had different duties or because he is unable to play like Oscar and Willian?

The question is whether he can perform there better than Oscar and Willian. I don't think so, although, like we said above, there isn't exactly a large sample to judge on.

I thought he was largely uninfluential in the game. Oscar and Willian usually have a lot more impact on the match in that position.

I'm pretty certain that's his "what the fuck have I done to deserve these shit journos" face

Now, THIS would be a good time to utilize your over use of exclamation marks!

But that's just down to the lack of quality we had in the youth teams, again, as evident by the fact that Jack Cork is our most successful academy product. How many of our youth products were as good as Courtois or Lukaku or KDB at the age of 18-19? Jose actually just said it before (or after) the Sporting game that the first time he was here the quality in the youth teams was much lower than now. Hopefully, now that the quality is increasing we can start doing what we did with Courtois to our own academy products.

By watching them play? I'd sincerely worry for you if you think that any of the youth players is currently better than the first teammers, or would you like us to have less quality in the team just for the sake of their weir obsession of promoting youth? They get a chance to prove themselves at competitive games through loans. Ideally it should be through the reserve system, but the gap between the reserves and the league has been rapidly widening in the past 10-15 years that top teams can't have players make that jump. Fuck off Again, loans. Yes, it is extremely unlikely that a youth player can make the immediate jump from the youth setup to the first team at a top club, which is why you loan them to small(er) teams where the gap is not as big. Of course, there could be exceptions like Ake, for example. The debuts for the players that won't be part of the first team anytime soon, is mainly PR, yes. But they are also a motivation for those players and the other academy players to work harder. Incidentally, right on cue:

*insert half-joking Mikel related post here*

The VERY simple explanation is that those players were good enough at that age to start for their respective clubs because at the time they did not have anyone better in their squads.While RLC, and all of the other youth players, although very promising, are no where near the quality of the first team. We always over-hype our youngsters and delude ourselves of how good they are, but fact is, NONE of the youth products here have amounted to anything after leaving Chelsea. Jack Cork is the most successful of the whole bunch! Our perception of those young players is always soooo far away from reality. Take Chalobah, for example, who might still be able to salvage a career here. But he had a few good games at Watford (and a few bad ones which no one likes to remember) and he was suddenly better than Ramires and Mikel and someone even said that he would a good shout for the England NT for the 2014 WC! Look at reality, though, he can't get a game for Burnley and last season was poor in the championship.

He'll just turn up at City... ...wait, that's brilliant! That's how we ruin City's season! Make sure Torres ends up with them by selling him to Red Bulls

Of course he won't! He's 18 years old and not anywhere near ready to be in the first team. Naturally, he wouldn't even get his debut for at least 2-3 more years but because we had a low-pressure match Jose decided to give him something of a motivation and a good moment for the lad, but it was never going to be more than a gesture.

Yes, I agree, there is little evidence either way, so, like I said to Barbara above, we can agree to disagree until there is more analyze. It is just a personal opinion on how I expect him to perform based on his abilities and attributes.

JT's technical ability has always been criminally underrated.

Yes, but not if he's still not 100% fit and starting him might risk him getting injured.

My intention was not to compare the two situations. I meant to give evidence that playing in a position in a certain system doesn't mean you can play it in any system. Of course the two situations are not comparable. You might be right that fatigue may have played a part in his performance yesterday, but I do think that, like you said, the inconsistency in his performances have been exaggerated. We can agree to disagree on how effective he can be in the advanced role until we have more games to judge on. Actually, if you go to the first point, it was that he is better playing deep than more advanced which some people seem to disagree with. And my second point, I guess, has been that, if some reason we don't want to play Cesc in the pivot, should he played more forward? And I'm arguing that, no, we should still play Oscar or Willian there because I think they offer more in that position.