Malcolm9

Better second half, our passive play in the first half cost us. Can the BT commentary team w**k over City anymore, as well as practically celebrate every foul Oliver didn't give our way.

No support, plus they are being closed down pretty quickly due to City having both their fullbacks spare.

I don't think 3 in the middle works, we need someone further up with Timo and Rom to stretch them more. Alonso has been pretty poor as well, I think Chilwell would give us more energy on that left side.

Werner hasn't played as much as the others so I'm not sure why you roped him in. Timo also came on and contributed pretty well, and provided the assist for Rudiger.

Timo may not score enough at the mo, but any of our fans who want to sell him can do one. Quality assist to Rudiger there.

Mount doesn't seem to like passing to Rom 🤔

First game in the PL against a resilient Villa team, can't really judge him on that.

If Reece hadn't of scooped his hand up he wouldn't have been shown a red card. The ball hit his thigh and then arm initially which would have been fine. That's a really good point considering the circumstances.

I really hope we smash this lot, they've had our number a few times over the last few years. Hopefully Lukaku can make it a memorable 2nd debut by putting them to the sword with a few goals.

He was more of a fling than an ex to be fair with the short amount of game time he had, I don't think he'll be a problem at all. What I'm hoping is he'll be the difference overall from us dropping points to the clubs below us as well as getting wins over the bloody Gooners.

We could say the same thing for Haaland, arguably the defences he's up against are not as good as Serie A. At least Rom is Premier League proven unlike Morata, Batshuayi, Abraham, Werner (who will come good) etc.

I don't understand the concern here, he is the type of striker who fulfils our needs and I also think he was one of a few main targets rather than a back up. Having an established powerful striker upfront will make the world of difference to our attack, with the last time we had that was with Costa.

The Lukaku downplaying in this thread and a few others is quite funny. The guy is the type of striker that works well with Chelsea; physical, mobile, can bring others into the game, and can score from various areas in the attacking third. The price is just the sign of the times with football, look at Grealish for 100 mil. You can't always gamble huge sums on young talent like Haaland, and we will easily be one of the favourites to sign him next season though I actually think he'll end up at Bayern anyway. Madrid, Barca are literally in troubled times, so I can't see them having the pull, then you have City, United & PSG. What about Mbappe at that point, if he was available soon would that make another option for clubs instead of Haaland.

I can't see Inter selling both their strikers. Werner isn't going to eat his lunch with Rom back. The amount of assists that Rom gave Martinez will be lapped up by Werner as well as take the pressure off him compared to last season.

It's not like we can't buy him next season if needed. Prices of top players have gone up even more, so we can wait until his release clause kicks in.