Name and shame them. No one in their right mind would hold such POV. The most outlandish claim around that time was that he had the potential to become one of the very best AM in the future which was nothing more than a baseless assertion. If anyone at any point in time actually thought he had more talent than Hazard then I would love to know so as not to ever take them seriously again.
It's bizarre isn't it? Guy is not even in the top 5 in the league on any day. Silva, Cazorla, Ozil, Mata, Eriksen........ And then there's Spain. Why are Chelsea fans so blinded by Oscar? Even on other forums, it's the same. He barely did anything in Brazil. We signed a prospect, a talent and it shows. Is it just a case of grasping at straws, I wonder? Or the guy is foreign with a nice sounding name and scores the odd golazo? I will never understand.
Assists and goals are precise stats? Sure, they tell you the end result, but show nothing behind the scenes. Key passes and dribbles for example show the opposite, what kind of a player we are dealing with and the players strengths. Goals and assists gain power the higher they amount to, but when you are in the grey zone (which one could argue Oscar is) there is absolutely no telling whether the goals scored were the 4-0 and 5-0 in a victory against Swansea, and whether the assist is of the type I describe below. In other words they could be utterly useless if not combined with supportive stats (and again, the higher the G&A amount, the less this is true. You dont need Ronaldo and Messi's supporting stats to know they are absolutely amazing players). I remember one assist Fabregas got early in the season where he was strolling around the box without a target and eventually just let Hazard get it. Hazard went on to dribble his way through several defenders and score. How important was Fabregas in this? There was no creative or technical or even positional effort behind it, the pass could have been from Cahill and it would have led to the same end result. I really dislike that you feel the need to use ad hoc arguments like describing people using chances created as "stupid". It is actually a very common measure for creativity, and you will find that combined with other stats, it is very revealing. Sure, it is easy enough to see that a player like Silva for example is creative without checking his stats, but that is beside the point. We want to see how good a player is in an area, not if they are good at all. You can also use other supporting stats to create a context for the other stats. Now, Oscar has scored important goals and assists, Im the first one to admit that. I enjoyed his assisting crosses for Costa and Hazard in particular. I also really enjoyed his goal from a free-kick. Personally the issue for me is not whether he is a good player, we all know he is. The issue is whether he can realistically be improved upon. I see a lot of people who believe that he can, and I have yet to see you or anyone else provide a very strong argument for why they are wrong. To be fair, it is rather impossible to prove either side wrong. The replacement-hunters side(which includes me) can show how poor creatively he is, how poor he is technically and argue for someone else who could do a better job as a 10. How are you going to argue against that? It is impossible to prove that (my favorite example) Firmino or any other player who has done a great job in their current club would be worse in Chelsea. Every single transfer has risk attached to it, and hindsight is always 20/20. I mean, look at Willian. He had scored one goal during the whole season from the flank. Yesterday he started centrally and got a goal in his first game. It is a very small sample, but it still implies that it is easier to gather points from that position, even for a player who is constantly bemoaned for lacking end-product. On the other side of the coin those who want Oscar to remain as 10 could say that he has scored this many goals and this many assists while bringing "balance". How is the other side going to prove that someone else would have done a better job? It is also impossible. It is a speculative zone that neither of us can prove. All we can do is state our opinions about whether Oscar is the right player. The opinion cant be wrong in this scenario. How we argue for our opinion can be wrong. I personally think that Chelsea had a lot more important problems to solve than Oscar. We had Ramires and Lampard in the pivot last season, Eto'o as a striker and an aging defense. Those were much more important problems than getting a small/medium amount of potential optimization from replacing Oscar. Now however, we have managed to acquire an absolute smashing 11, while also having a strong bench. Now is the time to focus efforts on replacing good players with great ones (if the market allows of course. If the only potential replacements are too expensive, not found or otherwise unavailable then the club of course waits). I further personally believe that Chelsea can do better than Oscar. To me he is this CFC-generations Mikel (although an offensive version ofc, one is better staying back while the other is better going forward). A solid, hardworking and comfortable on the ball player who fits perfectly as a squad player and occasionally have good games. You like having him in the squad, you start him when someone else who is better cant play, but ultimately you find him limited as a player and suspect there is someone else out there who would do a better job on that position. Since he is young though, he can still hide behind the "developing" label. Again, just my opinion. If Mou keep playing him for the next few seasons and he magically turn into twice the player he is today, I will be wrong but still very happy. I assure everyone it is possible to not find Oscar great while at the same time wishing Chelsea the best.
