... on loan! "Fulham Football Club is pleased to announce the signing of Lucas Piazon on loan from Chelsea until January 2017. The Brazilian attacker joined our SW6 neighbours in the summer of 2011, and in his first season won the FA Youth Cup and was named the club’s young player of the year. His first senior appearances coincided with high-scoring games in 2012/13, as he featured in 6-0, 5-4 and 8-0 victories over Wolverhampton Wanderers, Manchester United, and Aston Villa, respectively. Piazon then spent the second half of the season on loan in La Liga with Malaga, where he sampled UEFA Champions League football for the first time. The following campaign was spent on loan with Vitesse Arnhem, for whom he scored 11 times as they finished sixth in the Eredivisie, while he helped Eintracht Frankfurt to ninth in the Bundesliga in2014/15. Piazon’s first taste of Championship football arrived last season as he featured 27 times for Reading, scoring five goals, one of which came in their 4-2 defeat at Craven Cottage. The 22-year-old is a Brazil youth international, and has been capped up to Under-23 level Hopefully the first of a number of announcements!!
In browsing around to find out more about Piazon I came across this unbelievable fact - the Dark Side have thirty eight (38) players currently out on loan ! The full list and the clubs they've gone to is here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...n-joins-Fulham-loan-Chelsea-January-2017.html Add to that number the size of their different Youth squads and the mind boggles. It reminds me of a story I heard from way back, in the days when up in Scotland Glasgow Rangers were a force (on the field and financially). It went along these lines: "Clubs had two teams; the first team and the reserves. Not Rangers. They had 4 teams because if a player had a good game against them, they bought him so he wouldn't do it again".
So, Lucas is our first Brazilian and his first game for the Dark Side was back in 2011 against ... Fulham (in a Youth Team match). The consensus seems to be that he's more of a No.10 than an out and out striker so at a guess he's cover for Aluko and/or Cairney. Strolling through the Reading comments, where he was on loan last season, the reactions to him are fairly mixed but there's no doubting that Piazon is a skillful player. However make up your own mind by clicking on this video - which start with some basic facts and stats about the lad.
Lucas has apparently been moaning about continually being sent out on loan. He's being reported in the Daily Mail as saying, “I’m tired of moving abroad. One, two, three loans, maybe that’s enough. It’s time for me to stay somewhere for more than one year,” the 22-year-old said. “It makes no sense to go on loan all the time. It is not good for any player in my experience, or the experience of the other boys. I don’t see it as a positive thing any more. To be in a different place every year is not good for me at 22. It’s difficult to get a place in the team. They have their own players. You do your best, try to get a place in the squad, minutes on the pitch, score and create goals. That’s all you can do.” Not exactly sure what he's hoping to achieve. However, as this blog picking up on the Mail story says, hopefully being closer to home (not just the Dog Track, since he has a house in Kingston) and having a mate in Tomas Kalas will help him do something worthwhile for us. Blog story: http://theprideoflondon.com/2016/09/06/lucas-piazon-chelsea-loan-army/
