ForeverCarefree

For what little words written on the internet are worth my condolences go out to all of Coco's family and friends.

We just going to overlook the fact that he has 261 career goals in 536 appearances? For all the talk of tactics, formations etc. football is quite a simple game, score more goals than the other team and you win. Lukaku has a consistent scoring record that's why clubs are willing to pay big money for him. As for the large fees. There's plenty of players who have moved a times for big sums. Morata and Anelka being two former Chelsea strikers who immediately come to mind. Ibrahimovic, James Rodriguez, Higuain, Griezmann and Coutinho (if you include his large loan fees) have all racked up a decent sum of total money spent on them.

Raheem Sterling's record for Manchester City: 323 appearances, 127 goals, 91 assists. His numbers for the Premier League only are 216 appearances, 88 goals and 52 assists. Still only 27 years old. I do feel like he goes under the radar a bit but the level of consistency he's shown for City is really impressive.

No chance of the club's record signing and top goal scorer being left out.

Let's see if Roman lets him stay that long first.

Neil Warnock is probably in a minority of one with that opinion. Azpi has been consistently reliable throughout his time at Chelsea. That he's played as a right back, left back, wing back, right side of a back three and on rare occassions as a midfielder and always been an integral part of the team regardless of where he's played is testiment to just how good he is. Manager's of much better pedigree than Warnock have continuously picked Dave and long may it continue.

Thought he could consider himself a little unlucky not to have started the final and was slightly surprised when Pulisic was bought on to replace Mount ahead of him.

I'd still like to see more end product from him but he's very much written himself into the Chelsea history books already in the short time that he's been here. Hopefully much more to come from him in the future.

Massive loss for us if he's out for that long. Even when he isn't having his best of games he still works hard for the team, presses the opposition really well something none of the other attacking players are particularly good at.

Few rumours that he is frustrating his team mates at the moment with his poor play. Quite telling I thought that he didn't get any minutes in the final on Saturday. He's put in quite a few lackluster performances since Chilwell's injury and hasn't stepped up as we needed him to. Shame really because at the start of the season he was playing quite well and initially kept Chilwell out of the team.

The Athletic revealed earlier this month the Germany international is now looking for a salary in the region of £225,000-a-week to remain at Stamford Bridge. It is understood Rudiger, who is one of the lowest paid senior players in the squad right now on £90,000-a-week, had already made up his mind to leave earlier in the campaign. The 28-year-old had been offered around £140,000 to stay in August with the warning the offer wouldn’t get any better than that and he was upset by their stance. Talks stopped for months until Chelsea reached out in late December to reach a new agreement. There is a bit more positivity on both sides that something could still be finalised but Rudiger feels the hold-up so far has been caused by the club. After being asked what it will take for him to stay, the centre half told The Athletic: “I feel great here, I have always said it. I think the way I play you can see that I’m happy here. But there are also other people who have to make decisions.”

His trophy haul is getting pretty close to matching JT's.

If only Kepa could teach him how to save a penalty he'd be unstopable.

Is now the club's top goal scorer for all competitions this season.

Have you read the Lukaku thread on this forum?

Some very idealistic and romanticised opinions going on in this thread.

I think we spent £12m on signing JFH and a further £4m on signing some Icelandic bloke Eidur something or other from Bolton.

Reading this thread after Lukaku scores a winning goal:

He's probably been our best and most consistent player since Mendy went to the African Cup.

Problem is he'll come back to Chelsea and won't get any sort of reliable service to score the goals like he is for Southampton. He's doing well and there's definitely going to be a big decision for the club to make come the summer about his future.

Majority of the team doesn't look to be playing with much confidence at the moment. We've huffed and puffed to wins against Plymouth Argyle and Al-Hilal, teams with a fraction of our rescources and they both made us look pretty ordinary. The ball isn't getting forward quickly enough. Players keep taking the safe option when it comes to the passes they're making so instead of us being desicive we're just tapping it around the 18 yard area, teams get back into shape and in numbers and there's no space to exploit. Tuchel has shuffled the formations around a little recently but it's making no difference. I don't know what the answer is and it's starting to look like Tuchel doesn't either.

Conte took over a side that had finished 10th the previous season and turned them into title winners and did it with little investment. We resigned Luiz and was largely derided for that decision and week after week commentators and pundits were praying for him to make any sort of mistake so they could point out what a unreliable player he is. But Conte stuck him at the base of the back 3 and it covered all his weaknesses and played to all of his strengths. Converted Victor Moses from being a less than average winger into the best fullback in the league. Bought in Marcos Alonso who had previously played for Sunderland and Bolton but with him and Moses completely shook up the way that 50% of teams in the Premier League viewed how they set up their teams each week. And yet. even with all that good will in the bank we don't appear to have signed a single one of his preferred targets the following summer. He wanted Lukaku, Van Dijk, Oxlade-Chamberline, Nainggolan and we signed inferior players for every single one of those positions and had probably our worst ever transfer window. Conte was by no means faultless but we royally f**ked up that summer and massively let down a coach that had worked a small miracle.

Any one of them as a free signing and you'd have thought nothing of it but Ben Haim, Sidwell and Pizarro all signed at the same time was such a weird move. We signed Ivanovic and Anekla come the January which was a sort of acknowledgement of the poor business we'd done that summer. But coming off the back of the title wins we really should have cemented ourselves as one of the best teams in Europe but instead took a big step back in terms of the overall quality of the squad and we've never really got close to that level ever again.

What a d**khead.

Was signed on a free transfer. Either Roman suddenly threw a paddy and said there's no more money for transfers because he got fed up with Jose or Mourinho was trying to prove some weird point. We went from making record buys 4 years running to signing Ben Haim, Sidwell and Pizarrio on free transfers. It was a strange summer that one. I think Zhirkov was signed mainly because of his nationality. I got the impression Roman wanted a Russian/Easten European pressence in the team and that's why we had previously sign Smertin and Jarosik. He didn't play too badly for us but was always going to play second fiddle to Ashley Cole. Luis was a good player. I think he struggled to settle in England and also Mourinho liked to play Azpilicueta at left back to effectively compensate for Hazard doing no defensive work. I never really understood the high expectations that came with Kezman. He was signed for a fairly modest £5m and was mostly used as a sub. His total played minutes played in the league amount to the equivalent of playing just over 8 full 90 min matches. He also scored the winning goal in the League Cup final during his one season with us.