I would very much be interested in some of the drugs half this forum seem to be taking.
Refusing the greatest footballer of all time in favour of Harry f**king Kane?
I'm also confused by the idea that Kane would give us 30 goals because that's what he scores. Like it's a simple bit of addition. Why not have 11 strikers and see how many goals we'd score.
From what I've seen on here these past few weeks there is a strange notion of simplifying things to the point they're meaningless. The claw for Lukaku is almost a desperate nostalgia for Drogba. He's not Drogba and won't ever be. He's faster, but worse technically. They play in different ways and have different attributes.
I try to express this fairly often, but it's not worth replacing a player with a poorer version of the same player.
Harry Kane is good but as someone else quite eloquently put it, "Levy wouldn't sell us the steam from his piss for £70m." I think a few people rate him more highly than they should because of the English hope factor. The papers and every Englishman rates him more highly because he could be the saviour of the national team. He's not going to be the greatest of all time however. He isn't Pele or the Brazilian Ronaldo. He's a good player and a good goal scorer.
Incidentally, I think something similar has happened to Moses. After his poor time trying to make it as a winger, loans all over the place we'd all but given up on him. This year he has a break out season and plays wing back beyond all expectation. This leads to some saying that Danilo is a poor signing. Some saying that he's too expensive to be a backup, but given the inflated market that's not really true. Others saying that he's not as good as Moses. Clearly a pair of blue tinted spectacles are in need of removal or at least a good lens cleaning kit (my mum swears by putting them in the dishwasher). Moses has been exposed more than a few times and if Danilo failed to make the grade for looking a bit clunky compared to his teammates, I can only imagine how Moses would look in that Real side.
To my overarching point. It should go without saying that signing a player is extremely complicated. Styles can be changed without changing systems, systems can be changed without changing styles and players can be changed or not changed with all others changing. Signing Aubameyang would mean a change in style, but not necessarily a change in system. It would mean that Willian and Hazard would need to play closer for sure, but we would be blistering on the break. Something which genuinely excites me. Against the smaller teams, Aubameyang has that knack for finding space and we have two players in Hazard and Fabregas who have the ability to spot it and more so in Fab to find the pass. Pumping it to a big man doesn't have to be plan A and I'd much rather it isn't. Michy can hold the ball up and a slight rejigging would allow him to be our plan B.
Looking at stats is all well and good for finding out current performance, but isn't necessarily a solid predictor of future performance. There needs to be some qualitative analysis alongside. The system, the style, they type of chances are all factors that need to be considered. I think Aubameyang could work for us, I think Morata would be better and I think that both would be better than Lukaku. I know at this point it sounds a bit soft to say that as we failed to sign him, but I was more resigned to that decision than excited by it. I think there was too much wrong with signing Lukaku.
I could be proven wrong with all of this ina year from now, but hindsight is 20:20 and until then this is where I stand. Although if there's a chance we can get Griezmann as part of the Costa deal I'd carry him to Madrid on my bicycle.
