Leif

The players clearly lost respect for him for a reason. So, what was that reason?

First thing I've noticed is our wingbacks are instantly almost as forward as our wingers. I like that.

What I've seen from him is that he can dribble well, and he's not as good as Hazard at controlling the ball, but is similar in other ways generally, just not to the same standard. He screams to me of a player who'll turn out rather damn average all things considered. There's been plenty of wingers to 'bless' Valencia FC over the years, all of whom were good going forward and at dribbling, and I feel like this guy is another one of them, who should rightly be confined to fighting for a space in Europe via La Liga. He does one thing very well, which is go forward with some pace and tricks. But so do many players, and they'd all fail here for not offering enough outside of flair. Comparing the prices of both, regardless of age, I'd take Sanchez over him in a heartbeat. Far more all-rounded, refined, etc. This is a guy who doesn't elevate an already top-team to a new level, he just adds some more flair and excitement. I want to go to the next level. Currently, he's around Salah's level, and while I'd welcome him back, he is not near the sort of player required to take this team up a notch. We need to start in the midfield, with how we partner Kante up & with whom. Then, if we do splash on a forward, at least one with a defensive side coupled to an already unmatched attacking output, someone who doesn't need any time to become better, which is where Sanchez is perfect. New thought* - His level, and what he'd be great for us as, is Hazard's substitute. Not the player on the other flank, he simply wouldn't offer balance. But as the real top teams like Bayern, Barcelona & Madrid do, put the top class prospect every club is interested in on the bench, and make him fight for his place. We must be the only top team that allow Ligue 1 players to walk into our starting XI. Well there's no need; it's a big step up, from Monaco to Chelsea, so a player should be humble and understand their most crucial role will come in the future, not now; but we throw that away if we give starting spots to players before the team is truly tailored for what they have to offer. This would be like trying to fit a cubed block into a rectangle hole; almost right, but not quite.

I'll be shocked if any of us have seen 5 full games of the player.

Stats are fun, nothing too serious, but this is worthy of a bit of conversation:

The majority of Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc, are too passive to really be passionate & to-a-T regarding their faith; obviously because more often than not these days, they've just been following mum/dad's orders & found it easier to play along and call themselves whatever faith they are, than be scolded for otherwise. There's also a lot of perks to going along with this; you get a large community of 'friends' to an extent who you've never even met, special holidays, some decent philisophical teachings. So it's not OK to paint Muslims in general as dangerous; because the majority are no different from the rest of us. However, there are a portion of people who choose by themselves to follow certain faiths. And what I want to say is, that out of those people, out of the passionate die-hard believers who chose this path, it's only Muslims killing thousands of people. The passionate Christians who take texts from their faith literally are not for the most part, instigating murder. Neither are Jews who take their teachings literally, Buddhists, and so on. But I'd say the majority of Muslims who take their historic texts literally, do indeed harbor a dangerous energy which more or less stands as "Be one of us, or be less than us." It cannot be ignored then that when we evaluate the 'radical' portion of believers of each religion, Islam beyond tenfold is producing murderers & rapists. None of my 'Muslim' acquaintances fall into this bracket though, they're all, soft&fuzzy Muslims who're only on this path because it makes life easier for the reasons I said above. There is also a small portion of self-decided Muslims who are very intelligent people and know that not all texts & teachings should be gospel, but again, in comparison to other religions the figures are scary when you compare the rational vs. the irrational. At this point I'd say, the majority of Western Muslims are completely lovely people with no danger inside of them, but I feel for the sake of themselves and for the earth, they need to distance themselves aggressively from the old teachings of Islam & the current Eastern Muslims (for the most part; again, I've seen fine examples on this forum of lovely Muslims from Asia), and rebrand themselves essentially as Muslims mk2. It's like there's 2 types of Muslim just as there's 2 types of communism; the clean Marx kind, and then the butchered Stalin kind. The latter needs eradicated, because it's a dangerous cult fueled by misunderstanding.

The only player we need is Tielemans. It's mad that he's only 19 still & yet to get his first start for Belgium. It's even madder he hasn't been bought by a big club yet. He's near enough the same bracket as Hazard/De Bruyne/Courtois. He should still be refined defensively, because he's already good enough offensively. However, he wants to take baby steps, and apparently desires a move to Everton (which I think would be shit for him.) If we want a more experienced player who'd make an instant impact and also most likely be happy taking a backseat role in 4-5 years, Vazquez of Sevilla fits the bill. He's never had a bad run of games for them yet, and he's tall for a player whose main purpose is getting the ball forward (yet at the same time, he's their best defensive player, beyond even N'Zonzi who's still a baller over there.) Then as always, there's Oliver Torres who's fulfilling the great potential he's always had. Should've bought him while at Atletico like I harped on about; now Porto will sell him for at least 40m in the future instead of the 10m we could've bought him for. There's no need at all for the likes of Verratti who'd eat up our transfer budget, leaving us poorly reinforced in other areas. There are plenty options who're at least half the price, but not half the player by any means.

The only pressing he does is when a player is 2 feet away from him & they're near the opposition box. Other than that he's a tree stump waiting for the ball.

Let a guy use emphasis; Diego DOES ruin many attacking chances, more than he finishes. This is what people, myself especially mean, when we say he's the worst target man we've ever seen for someone of his build. He doesn't retain possession 90% of the time, he loses it, he does, it can't be debated. He's only useful when he's in the box. Any player on the planet can pass to Willian for a goal like has been highlighted above; doing it once or twice is not something to talk about. He is not consistent in any area besides being useless for at least half the game, and then scoring every 2nd or 3rd game. That's all he is. He has no pace, no dribbling ability, no football intelligence compared to his peers worth the same amount of money, poor work rate, etc. But he's aggressive and a 'lad' so he gets a pass. Truly great strikers know how to hold onto the ball for more than 2.5 seconds before losing it. This is something Diego cannot do unless he's already broken the defensive line and is in on goal. When we don't have the ball, we're playing with 10 men while he's on the pitch; no hassling of the opposition players who could potentially end up with the ball, like many great strikers do, like Drogba did the best. Just a choppy tackle from behind sometimes if a player is already close to him, pray the ball ends up at Hazard's feet, start running towards the box, then either go in a huff once the ball goes to a player who isn't him / get the ball, lose it within 2 seconds / or sometimes, more rarely, actually take a shot on target. As stated in other days, he gets credit for what he HAS done, we can't deny the goals, but to not expect better is lunacy.

I was confused too; in what world were we exposed? We weren't exposed. Matic was Matic and besides that we played a solid game against a solid team. It's more like; How Burnely managed to avoid a thrashing by Chelsea, or something.

To an extent; Napoli are passing it around midfield and not the defence We can call it Sicilian style since it's more ballsy.

Napoli's passing tempo & patterns is exactly what I want our players to do. It's easy, it's safe, it frustrates and tires out the opposition, and you stay in control. Madrid are fighting for scraps, yet Napoli aren't in full on attack mode themselves.Their style suits us.

Evolution.

You have 2 eyes for a reason. As a species I've no doubt we only grew our 2nd eye due to a burning desire to watch 2 different games of rock-throw at once.

Luck? Are you implying Juventus are in a position to turn down 80m even after Pogba's sale? They've barely broken even after that sale considering the purchase of Higuain; they will sell Dybala for whatever we sell Costa for. They've not made a good profit for a looooong time all deals considered. They wouldn't sell their most marketable star and not Dybala. The former was even vastly more important to them on the field. They'd find a Dybala replacement as quick as we can snap our fingers, and they'd do it with 60m leftover. They would like that. Lewandowski? Bayern's best striker in a long time, but ageing. They'd have to at least consider our offer to not be seen as braindead, which they clearly aren't considering their consistent success both on the field and with transfer dealings. Both are very much attainable. You underestimate the power of London (Turin's the 3rd biggest shithole in Italy), the power of a fresh and inspiring Conte compared to an almost-forgotten-about-now Ancelotti & an uninspiring, borderline crap Allegri. You underestimate how much additional funding we could add to a transfer fee proposal, and you underestimate too the simple desire to play in the Premier League, over Italy, at least.

With the money we'd get for him we could buy Dybala, who if you haven't seen enough off is essentially Aguero on steroids (I say that because Aguero was not at this level at that age, but their strengths & weaknesses are generally the same.) He's also a bit like prime-Torres. He's a goal getter, and while he isn't strong, it's soon forgotten when you see how he can glide past players as if he's on ice. In fact I think he's the only player who could replace Messi eventually to a decent standard. As I harp on about, Lewandowski is also at least equal to Costa, it just depends on the system whether or not he surpasses him. I understand if they're not considered realistic buys, but I think with 80m+, both of those guys are leaving. On paper, based on stats, and based on the opinions of people we should take seriously, those are really the only 2 players on the same level of Costa. However, there's always the clear fact which us top clubs ignore, which is when the system is right, you can potentially find 5 players in Ligue 1, or the Portugal league, all of whom would cost peanuts and yet excel greatly given a better manager & teammates. In that vein, I believe Mitroglou would be very solid here for example. Though i'd like him as a back up, since the easiest way to win titles is by having experienced bench players, not bench players who still need to be nurtured (as is our case). One thing is clear; there has never been a poorer pool of strikers in Europe. Football is in shambles compared to what it used to be, the worst it's ever been in so many ways, and that makes everything complicated regarding our expectations. (Also, I'd sign Muller from Bayern and make him a full time striker. He's essentially prime Rooney minus the freekicks, playing on the wing for his career, which is an insult to his qualities. With Conte, he'd become the best poacher there is, but with all the hardworking qualities of a different sort of player. He's having the worst season of his career, so I imagine him being allowed to leave for 50m in this current climate, maybe even 40m.)

let's just shower all our players with even more money to buy their loyalty even though their contracts have more than enough years on them still, yes, superb, necessary

Nainggolan would be *the* perfect partner for Kante. No other player in any top club offers equally good defense and offense. Yet he does. In fact, Roma fans are calling for him to be their new captain ahead of De Rossi, which is crazy considering the context and importance De Rossi holds there. However, this is one of the few top players these days who genuinely loves the club he's at. He wants to be captain as much as the fans want him to be captain, yet they all still fear that the shitty board will sell him. However again, everyone in the club from the board to the manager are adamant that he won't go for anything under Pogba's price, considering he's genuinely and truthfully twice the player. He's about as marketable as my big toe, though.

Any & all of the Monaco starting players would fit in well here. They're all exceptional and it's criminal that there aren't more questions and curiosity in regards to how these players were found & moulded.

Based on this first 10 minutes that was a really impressive post. Spot on entirely clearly.

Szczesny has been the best goalkeeper in Europe this season, even beyond Milan's young genius & our Belgian waffle. Arsenal will be getting a vastly improved player back. A 'keeper learns so much more in Italy than in England.

Jesus is out 2-3 months, so now Aguero will have a purple patch that makes City reconsider whether they're crazy for not yearning to hold onto him.

He plays for himself and not the team. He only engages in moves that he thinks will end up with him having the ball in the box. He just stands there otherwise, waiting for you to give it to him, so that he can take too long, fumble, and then lose the ball. Nobody's taking anything away from the important goals he's contributed, but that has to be balanced with foresight, and clearly he is not a long term option if we want to consistently be at the top of competitions. If we had an equally good striker, and rotated the 2 or played them together, things would be very different in my mind.

Courtois' brilliant with the ball at his feet

I don't believe in unstoppable freekicks - we see plenty freekicks on target every season, the majority of which do not go in. It's romantic to believe a shot can be 'unstoppable', it's just not true. Matic gave away the set piece, but Courtois really could (not necessarily should) have done better. A goalkeeper letting in a freekick simply boils down to a bad game for them, unless it's balanced out by 5 wonder-saves at the near post or something. So equal responsibility goes on the both of them. If we drop 2 points, it's 1 point due to Matic, 1 point due to Courtois.