Argo

Chances are with him the team we won't get that high a number possession.

Ill put this another way. You own a business, your employer wins you a top contract with excellent work in his first 12 months working for you so understandably you want to reward him, he takes an unexplained ten day holiday, ok beyond taking the piss but for what's he done for your company you feel duty bound to give him a chance to make amends. However for the next year he's constantly moaning and moaning at you and about you, banging on about how sh*t his tools are (while the man you replace him with is getting a tune out of a lot of the same tools that were apparently useless) even though you are paying him a kings ransom to get the best out of what he's got while he can't be arsed to even try and made the confidence of some of your other staff so low they have all gone from assets to liability's. Then after 10 months of that plus him telling anyone that will listen that you are basically a tosser and trying to set a stigma towards you and your company you finally have had enough and have told him where to go, only for him then to try and take you to court for a huge pay off, would you be so keen to "give him his sh*t and be done with it" then?

Not if he broke the terms of his contract he doesn't,

That's a myth, there's a reason that most youngsters that make it get slowly integrated over a period of half a decade as to rushed straight.

Not really, look at Christensen last season, by default we got to a point where we were reliant on him and eventually it became too much for him to cope with at such a young age. The idea that a bunch of teenagers will step up over a transfer ban and become important players is beyond hopeful at best, given such prominent roles so young could destroy even the good enough ones as it did with AC.

Promoting youth out of necessity won't help them or us, if anything it will do the opposite.

That's a massive insult to all 3 to say they just make 5 yard passes. It doesn't matter where the goals come from as long as they do, we are the second highest scorers in the league so this myth that we aren't getting enough goals from other areas to compensate for that trio is just that.

It's not up to them three to hurt the other team on the scoring steaks, it's not their main job, they are here to offer the platform for the whole team to perform and do their job just fine. All our front players with the possible exception of Giroud are going to hit better numbers than last term purely because of the way we control games. It's the striker and fullback positions that need improving, that midfield is the best we have had for quite some time.

Given we have had a number midfielders in the past with a habit of often finding opponents when it was easier to find teammates (ala Matic, Meireles, Oscar, Bakayoko, Ramires for example) in times gone by i thought we would be the last set of fans to mock the idea of having a midfield capable of keeping possession and dominating games. You can make a case for Barkley being the better option than Kova when he is on it like he was in the period between the Saints and Burnley games, but for the most part it's a no contest, and this is coming from one of the very few who actually vouched for Barkley's signing in the first place.

Neither would have had the discipline to have performed the man marking job on Fabregas that Mason did.

Maybe, but both looked totally lost tactically and it's a regular theme for both especially with Ruben, even in his hattrick game Sarri had to pull him aside to give him instructions on nearly every break in play. Kova you know you will get tactical competence as a bare minumum which is more a crucial tool than you think at the top level, look at the difference with him on and not in the three big games this season, especially Arsenal.

RLC and Barkley showed on Thursday night why they are unlikely to displace Kova in the long run, on form both can be assests as they have demonstrated at various times this season, but off it they can be liability's. Even Kova below par does his defensive covering and plays his passes well and moves into the right areas. If we are serious about getting back to the top at home and abroad our core three midfielders have to be Jorginho, Kante and Kova or a similar signing of that ilk with Mount back providing the competition. Barkley and Ruben don't have the consistentcy or the discipline to be starters here in my opinion.

Every time i went to games with him playing he made Berbatov look like Kante on speed work rate wise.

Lukaku is a totally different player, he's closer to Torres than Drogba style wise. If any current striker was comparable to DD style wise it would unfortunately be Kane (few steps behind quality wise though).

Club Ambassador will be the role that suits him most in my opinion.