As you said, we wanted to loan Ba to arsenal. But they went for ozil, so giving them ba would have been stupidity of the highest level. We were now stuck with 4 strikers while playing only one striker, so lukaku's chances of playing slimmed down to 1/4. No other person wanted to loan Ba, so for lukaku's slim chances of surpassing benteke for the world cup, he needed to play more and not hope. From here, it was a logical option. I am very confident that lukaku also opted for this decision personally. So people should stop blasting the board for this.