Sideshow Luiz

Ahhhh, yes, him. "I'm so sick of it Robbie...."

Claude?

Giroud's finishing is comically bad. He scores some great goals, but I'd rather have 10 routine goals for every highlight FIFA-esque goal he scores. Best performance I've seen from the team for some time. Looked dangerous throughout the match.

Sorry Spurs. Even with Atkinson, still couldn't get it done. Better team went through, Spurs were lucky it even went to pens.

I thought David Luiz was fantastic in that half. The papers took Sarri's leader comments and of course turned over to Hazard. But, it seems that Luiz wanted to respond as well. #Geezer

You thought Pedro was especially bad? I didn't really get that. His end product was a little lacking, but I thought he did a really good job of being direct and dribbling his marker towards the centre to create space for Azpi's overlap (cross + goal). I suppose I never really get upset about Pedro though because even when he's off his game, he still uses his head and works his ass off.

How many fouls does Dier get before a booking. He's such a dirty bitch, not even smart enough to be subtle about it.

Line-up suggesting that Spurs are going to go with a midfield diamond. Let's see if we make any changes. That formation has been giving us trouble to play against. Happy viewing everyone.

When the stories were going around about a play who said "I don't even think he knows my name" in training, I was thinking it was him. Guess not. There's also 0 chance that he plays ever CHO or Willian.

Hi Napoli highlights tend to have a few other attackers in the box occupying defenders (his finishing and dribbling/touch are still class, don't get me wrong). We still need other players to get in to dangerous positions or he's going to have at least 2 defenders draped all over him all the time.

Good point. Bad memories.

We need a midfielder. 40 is a lot for a backup. It's hard. The player has to be good enough, but not so good that they complain about game time or cost too much. Usually this is where teams with a plan get a younger player in to be the understudy and groom them. We can't do that because we have no idea who the manager is going to be in 2-3 years nor have any idea of how they are going to want to set up.

18M to loan for another year. That's quite a bit. If he gets goals, no one will complain.

Don't think so.

Anyone else think it's odd that he says "You know very well....". Is this common knowledge? AC always needs to do a poo right before or during the match?

He hasn't been amazing this season, and we'd be really strong at RB with this signing. But, c'mon, the left side is so crap.

120M asking price for Allan. Have fun dealing with Napoli, PSG https://gianlucadimarzio.com/en/napoli-psg-continue-to-insist-for-allan-the-latest

And back on defence. That guy has a serious motor. Converted winger too, if I'm not mistaken (in his younger days). I think he's seriously underrated and getting someone like him is difficult, IMO. I thought Kovacic might be, but he doesn't come close to what Hamsik provides in the final 3rd. And yes, I also thought Barkley would be able to do the role as he has the needed physical qualities and his improvement at the start of the season had me really hopeful.

That's true. Though, I haven't been feeling the boyhood club love vibe recently.

If he wants to leave us, a buy back means nothing. Especially if it's to Bayern Munich. If he wanted to stay but needed pitch time and didn't want a loan, then yeah. Selling him to Bayern at this stage makes a buy back useless, IMO.

Sorry man. It was complete BS. There were some terrible calls in the AFC games as well. But, really, that was just atrocious.

I think this is what it really comes down to with CHO. If he said he wanted to leave for more playing time and was talking about Levekusen, or Liepzig or something like that, it would be less of a discussion point. I put this in the Luiz thread though because this is the kind of thing that endears him further to me. He's right, you can't just walk in to the starting XI at a club like this at 18. Work on your game instead of worrying about moves.