I admit that I definitely didn't *expect* you to win against City (although I wasn't surprised you beat them given their record against you), but I did expect you to beat Southampton and Wolves. So it's swings and roundabouts I guess. IMO, if you're going to use the City performance as a building block, then you need to beat Burnley in midweek. No point beating City and then dropping points to Burnley. We've got Wolves at The Emirates, and although we beat them at Molineux, the game is going to be extremely difficult. Wolves do better on the road and we've not actually beat them at home since they've come back up. They're a real pain in the ass. Man Utd have Watford at home this weekend, which suits them I'm sure. Meanwhile, West Ham play Wolves, so one of (or both) of these sides could potentially begin to slip away from the pack. The top-4 race is hotting up... Great for the neutral I'm sure, but not for us
Funny. I did get the feeling of sighs of relief by tv when McGuire turned his marker around and scored.
****ing hell! A couple of them weren't bad, to be fair. Edit: Just thought, do the last 2 count, considering he was offside? 5 touches...
I'm still in favor of VAR for reasonably well organized leagues and tournament staffed by competent officials. International rugby and Major League Baseball are examples. In these cases, you lose some of the fun in order to eliminate the great majority of demonstrably wrong decisions. In the case of the Premier League, VAR turns out to be the backfiring gun that comes popping out of the clown car when the officials tumble out to make a decision. VAR has succeeded only in adding another layer of f***wittery to a process organized, run and carried out by f***wits. If the wonders of addition are beyond PL officials, and they clearly are, as demonstrated by their inability to calculate injury time, why should we expect them to have a functional understanding of the words, "clear and obvious error"? The decisions are no fairer. The impact is that I don't celebrate goals anymore. I sit around trying to figure out if they're going to be called back. As if this isn't bad enough, nobody announces when a goal is really, honestly, no kidding going to stand. I've watched a pen granted after the final whistle, and wouldn't have been shocked to see Kane's goal versus City called back at that point.
When Lukaku first came back to the PL (actually for a while after) there was a lot of debate over whether he was better than Kane. Talk of how much he had improved in Italy etc. Even today I heard an "informed contributor" mention that Lukaku has "scored more goals than Kane this season" (yes I know).
I don't think it's a coincidence that all of Chelsea's strikers go to ****, though. Werner and Lukaku cost about £150m and they've both succeeded elsewhere. They're completely different players too, so what's the issue?
It's George Weah's son's birthday today. Timothy Weah is 22, wears the 22 shirt at Lille and the date is 22/2/22. He's American and it still works there, too.
Leeds fans sung, "Mason Greenwood, he's one of your own", to Manyoo on the weekend. They responded by singing, "Mason Greenwood, he's Yorkshire like you."
In the case of Werner I'd blame Fat Frank for playing FUT on Uncle Roman's dime without realising the team really didn't mesh that well in reality Lukaku's a different proposition, though, as Tuchel has basically dropped him into a team which still lacks some balance yet expected him to overcome it, when in the past Lukaku plays at the pinnacle of a team set up for him hence he averages 1 in 2 in goals, not touches in the opponent's half
They either don’t fit the system, aren’t suited to the league or just aren’t as good as people think. As these players are at a high-profile club with fans who aren’t renowned for being patient, they get scrutinised heavily and then criticism rapidly spirals, which naturally leads to a loss of confidence. Just before Werner went to Chelsea, I had a friend who watches Bundesliga regularly telling me that, although Werner has a decent goal scoring record, he is also not very clinical and can be wasteful in attacking positions. He was also playing in an inferior league. With Lukaku, I think it’s been an amalgamation of things. Firstly, despite his success in Italy, it also isn’t the strongest league to prove yourself in. If you look at Serie A's leading goalscorers, a lot of the strikers aren't particularly well known or are past their best. Immobile, Dzeko, Zlatan, Joao Pedro, Candreva, Giroud and Pedro Ledesma are all amongst the top 10 leading scorers. None of these strikers would be as prolific right now in the PL. So Lukaku doing well in Italy didn't necessarily mean he'd 'improved' during his time in Milan like many Chelsea fans were saying after he rag dolled our 4th choice CB Pablo Mari at The Emirates... The other thing is that Tuchel seemed to play him as a target man which isn't what he's suited to. He seemed to have more success playing off the shoulder of a second striker and having the ball into his feet so he can drive at defenders. Chelsea also don't have many (any?) creative midfielders, so sometimes when he has made a good run, their current midfielders don't have the vision to execute the pass he wants. The interview about leaving Inter also didn't help matters and I reckon that has affected the team dynamics, despite his apology. Wouldn't surprise me if he leaves in Summer.
Werner and Lukaku are two sides of the same coin. They are wide forwards who excel at running into space on the counter. They would be brilliant under a manager like Conte but won't work in a possession-based side. Chelsea would be far better off we went with Havertz in the Firmino role and just had better goal-scoring attacking mids than we have currently.
