TorontoChelsea

I agree, but long term, especially if they can improve their defence, they have the look of a good team. I like that. I like when we have a lot of competition and still win. I want the Premier League to be amazing and for us to be the best of the best, not some situation like Spain or Germany where only 1 or 2 teams can ever win. Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, City, Spurs, and United make for an amazing top-6.

Poor. We spent 60M pounds and had fairly mild upgrades. There's a point when adding players, even quality players has very little benefit. (Law of diminishing return). I have no doubt that we are a better team now than when the transfer window opened, but not that much better and for the amount we've spent, we should have improved enormously. If we play 60 games this year that means a total of 180 starts for our attacking midfield. Last year, Mata, Hazard, and Oscar combined for 150 starts. (With Ramires and Moses taking almost all the rest). We needed to add depth there and getting De Bruyne back was perfect for that. It made Moses our fifth attacking midfielder and gave us 4 solid players to rotate. Without Willian or Schurrle, we could have gone something like Oscar, Mata, Hazard, with 45 starts De Bruyne 35 starts and Moses with 10 starts. Perfectly fine. Without just Willian, that breakdown becomes let's say Oscar, Mata, and Hazard, 45 starts each , De Bruyne and Schurrle 20 starts each, and Moses 5 starts. That's already great depth, less playing time for our top players and fewer starts for De Bruyne and Schurrle than they should be getting. And then we added Willian which now means that any time one player gets will just be taken away from another quality players' time. Similarly, for Eto'o. Does he improve us over Lukaku? Probably, but it's a marginal improvement again (although this time, the cost is low). Going into the season, I would have rated our primary team needs as follows. 1) Elite striker (not in goals per se, but overall link-up, efficiency, goals, etc,,,) 2) Excellent central midfielder We didn't get either of those. Of course, even a marginal improvement can help an expensive and talented team get a few extra points and win the league (which is possible for us), but I don't think we spent the money particularly efficiently.

Scoring goals in one season does not prove you are a capable #1 striker. He is a very good goal finisher, but to be a striker for a top team like Chelsea, Lukaku has to be able to do more. Demba Ba scored 15 goals last year and 16 goals the year before and he's not good enough to start for Chelsea. (And you need to stop bringing up the hattrick against ManU as a way of proving his quality. It was the last day of the season and neither team had anything to play for and ManU had a pathetic back 4. No, Rafel, no Vidic, no Ferdinand, and no Evra. You can't take that as a way of him performing against top teams.) The bottom line is that our manager doesn't think he's ready!!!

I believe he can be loaned to a Championship team in-between windows. Back to Watford perhaps?

I can guarantee you 100% that it has literally nothing to do with that. Lukaku has a lot of improvement to make with his runs, his timings, his first touch, his passing, etc...Like any player, he needs playing time to improve.

Don't agree with a word of this. Nobody is discarding the goals he scored last year but he is not a finished product and more importantly, Mourinho doesn't see him as someone we need to keep so wouldn't have played him regularly anyway. This loan could do a lot for him if he shows the ability to excel as a team's #1 striker which he hasn't done. If he succeeds, he will be back at Chelsea and playing regularly for us. I don't understand why people are so outraged by this..

Why? I don't understand the obsession with young players. A young promising striker who has barely played for Chelsea and will be playing for another team and you want him to score more goals than our strikers? Why???? Why not just hope he develops and comes back to Chelsea a more complete player and able to lead our line next year?

I hope Eto's does or Torres or any Chelsea player. I hope Lukaku does well, but I am more interested in him being a more well-rounded player than anything. I think it ultimately came down to Mourinho not thinking Lukaku was ready to be our #1 striker. If he wasn't going to be #1, there really was no point in keeping him. He is an immense talent but is still a much rawer player than people want to admit. Last year, he played a lot of games but subbed a lot and had competition, but this year he'll be WBA's undisputed #1 striker and he'll be a target for defences to track. It will be great for his development.

Sky says back to WBA at Lukaku's own request.

We don't if we have Schurrle but it doesn't matter because we will almost certainly keep Ba and have 3 strikers and Schurrle.

I don't think anyone cares about the penalty. We can't get rid of Torres though so he stays. Also, we don't need to develop him so the only purpose of going on loan would be to get his wages off the books. I'd actually rather loan out Lukaku and see him develop his game more than see him get 6 starts with us. It looks like it will be Eto'o, Torres, and Ba and Lukaku will get more playing time elsewhere.

No, it really isn't. Third strikers basically never play in a 1 striker systems and teams that play with 1 striker, don't carry three people who are really only suited for the #9 (or rather, they often do, but the third is either a 19 YO or somebody they don't care about). Arsenal had one striker last season (and used midfielder/wingers like Walcott, Gervinho, and Podolski there Spurs had 2. We had 2. That's the normal number for 1 striker systems. The reason we needed a 3rd striker last season was because our top option sucked, we played a record number of games, Sturridge wasn't trusted as a striker and then was sold, and Ba was European cup tied. We didn't need a third striker, we needed a #1 striker. Mourinho clearly trusts Schurrle to play as a striker, so if he has to start 5-10 games, we'd be fine. The third option at any position is almost never going to play

Why? When was the last time Chelsea used 3 strikers? In a one striker system, you just need 2 strikers and a third player who could fill in in an emergency. That's it. Right now, we have 4 strikers and Schurrle.

First off, we don't know if this is going to happen, Second and more importantly, whoever stays from Lukaku/Ba will likely be our third striker and almost never play. Lukaku would have stayed and got playing time but Eto's became available on a free and Mourino wanted him. Now, he won't get much playing time. Being able to play as a #1 striker for a pretty good team is going to be great experience (if this does happen).

It's be the best situation for him. Good squad with a terrible striker.

Not really. Eto'o, Torres, with Schurrle able to provide cover and Mourinho has shown that he is fine with him there. You really only ever use two strikers in a season and your third striker never plays (unless they are also able to play midfield).

The league has been off to an incredibly boring start. Probably due to new managers at the top clubs being extra conservative with their new squads, but way too many negative tactics so far. Three big matches so far (ManU against Liverpool and Chelsea and Spur Arsenal) have seen a total of 2 goals and very few chances. Hopefully, teams that add more talent will feel able to open things up more and we'll get more exciting games.

No, you actually don't. You need about 14-15 regulars and maybe 3 or 4 other players who play fairly regularly. What happens if Oscar has a bad patch? Well, we have De Bruyne and Hazard who can play in the middle. Schurrle I am sure would be fine there as well.

No, but if you have a player you are not going to start regularly and another team is going to offer 35-40M for him you have to take it. It's up to Mourinho IMO and how he wants to use Mata. If he sees him as a fairly regular starter, then we should hold on to him. If he sees him as a squad player, then we should sell him.

Which summarizes how useless chasing tweets is. Maybe you will have to wait the extra 11 seconds until a news organization reports it, but you won't go through this endless garbage.

Well, then he won't mind Stoke.

That's what playing in a system based entirely around one player (Ronaldo) will do for you. Ozil is a fantastic player and deserves to be on a team that uses his strengths.

De Bruyne didn't play anything like our central midfield in Bremen. he played attacking midfielder and in the Bremen system, he often played almost as a second striker. He simply is not nearly good enough to play effectively in a pivot. His tackle success rate is 25% (He either misses or fouls on the other 75%). That's not bad, that's atrocious. This year he has been successful on 20% of tackles so far so that trend is continuing. Not a guy you want sitting in front of your defenders. (Ramires and Lampard have won 66% and 53% of duels respectively, and 53% is not good but twice as good as De Bruyne). I also think our central midfield has just become the focus for what is wrong with the team for years (mostly because we haven't bought anybody new and don't have anyone young there and people really have new and young player obsessions) and tends to be blamed for everything, but while I don't see any pairing as ideal, right now, it is hardly THE major hole in our team the way people want to portray it. When he have been vulnerable defensively, it has almost inevitably been on the wings. Overall, in the three league games, our central midfield has been quite good. The two players have combined for 6.3 tackles a game to only 1.7 fouls. They have 1 goal and 1 assist. They've combined for almost 88% passing and no defensive errors. I'm sick of seeing every single game where we struggle at all being "the pivot is too slow", "we need the pivot to blah blah blah" as the default to why things are wrong. I'm not saying that it isn't sometimes at fault just that it gets blamed for everything. They have to have a fantastic game to get any praise. I think there are a myriad of reasons for this. One is that people don't seem to fundamentally understand what central midfielders in a system like Mourinho's are supposed to do.

De Bruyne was awful defensively last season. You don't have to be great, but you have to be decent and De Bruyne isn't yet. He's an attacking midfielder or a central midfielder in a 4-3-3.

Baffled by Moye's choices. Giggs, Welbeck, and Young might be the worst front 3 possible (As opposed to say Valencia, Rooney, and Kagawa) Kagawa was one of the best players in the Bundesliga 2 years ago and showed a lot of life at the end of last year when he finally got over his injuries and got regular playing time. He still hasn't even got into a game and Giggs has played in 3. Really don't understand what he's doing but I think it's good for us!