42 minutes ago, coco said:

CHO      Hazard      Willian

Please don't, i can't take seeing that again. Sarri may well be better at setting up attacking teams compared to Conte, but i hate playing Hazard in the false 9 position. He's not very good at it and he's half the player when playing there.

Seems to have continued where he left off last season.
We have a major issue to deal with, with regards to our striker situation. There are at least six teams with far better striking options than us at the moment and you are never going to compete for the league when that is the case.
People are putting faith in Michy but he's not the answer as he's proven over two seasons here.

Morata - Sorry, never. Not as long as there is a hole in his ar$e.

This position more than any other is so much about instinct as well as ability. Unfortunately Morata has neither.

Also Tmmy is not a good enough replacement and i suspect Bats also isn't up to the mark (although he might fit the Sarri model).

We need to go big in this area, for me. Dybala, Belotti, just somebody with a natural instinct for putting the ball in the net.

Dare i say it, much as his attitude stank at times, god i would take Costa back in a heartbeat. I would get on a plane to Spain and give him a piggy back all the way to SB right now to be honest.

 

With no real striker or someone that can produce many goals we can say goodbye to top 4 already.

Sure we got Hazard but he isn't a big scorer he needs someone in front that can drag the team and put some pressure off from the defense, Hazard didn't like playing as false 9 and that's one of the reasons why he started to dislike Conte or thinking if he should change clubs.

I don't see Morata improving in any department, he looks the same so he isn't hitting the gym so he could might as well get injured again and then carry some odd back injury like last season, and he isn't improving his finishing either, he looks like this is his peak.

Just need Sarri to tell him he's too wasteful and if he doesn't become more clinical he'll never become the best centre forward in the world ...

It is worrying, he doesn’t look like he’s going to improve at all.

Have to keep our fingers crossed and hope Sarri can sort him out.

1 minute ago, Sexyfootball said:

Just need Sarri to tell him he's too wasteful and if he doesn't become more clinical he'll never become the best centre forward in the world ...

Does it really need Sarri to tell him tht when the entire fan base and social media are telling him week in week out. The amount of chances he misses or doesn't even see reminds me of a championship player. Is he more clinical than Dwight Gayle?

Michy should start on Sunday if he is available

I was astonished at how bad he was today. Literally could not believe it. It seemed like every time he got the ball it was an immediate turn of possession. We should recoup whatever we can for him, while we can. 

It might be pre-season, but I have no reason to believe that he’ll get much better. He has to be third choice right now behind Giroud and Michy, I can’t see him staying beyond this season, barring a dramatic improvement. 

Send this man a message. 

3 hours ago, Floyd25 said:

It might be pre-season, but I have no reason to believe that he’ll get much better. He has to be third choice right now behind Giroud and Michy, I can’t see him staying beyond this season, barring a dramatic improvement. 

and there lies a poor season ....take Giroud out of the picture we are out the game .... Michy is not good enough and Morata is not willing to work to improve his game 

At least this means Batshuayi might finally be given a shot in the team. The less we see of Morata the better. Yesterday was as bad as Bakayoko. 

The one thing he is good at, heading the ball, and he still couldn't finish the sitter that CHO put on a plate for him. 

Asked about Alvaro Morata, Sarri said the birth of his twins on Saturday might have had an impact

'I don’t know if he is not confident. Maybe he was tired. The last three days for him were very intense, so maybe this match he was a bit tired. I am not worried about Morata.'

 

Good management there ... backing his player in public ...

1 hour ago, Sexyfootball said:

The last three days for him were very intense, so maybe this match he was a bit tired.

It's very kind of Sarri to say this, but personally I don't think sitting in bar next to the hospital, smoking a cigar and drinking a couple of glasses of rum takes that much out of you. Shouldn't take three days to recover.

Edited August 2, 20187 yr by Ilya

15 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

 he'll never become the best centre forward in the world ...

L o l, is that his ambition. I can tell you that too. 

I believe this is now the single biggest problem we have heading into the new season. And it is a massive problem. 

I don't want to stick the boot in on the back of a few pre-season friendlies, but this has been going on since the turn of the year. It'snot just pre-season. 

Unfortunately, last night just refreshed our memories. We should have been at least 3 up by half time and out of site, had it not been for Moarat's finishing. We ended up losing (sort of, but you get the point). 

We will lose games, and a lot of points if we go into the season with a striker who can't take chances (even when they are put on a plate for him, time and time again). 

I was unsure of whether I wanted Higuain or not. I knew it was bad in a financial sense, but might have got us out of jail for the season at least. 

The more I see of Morata in front of goal, the more I wish we had got Higuain to be honest. 

Pre-season game..... a self-confident cocksure striker would be pissed off if he misses these chances(and a penalty) in a water polo with his legs. 

He's bad, stop these excuses. He is just bad. 

Edited August 2, 20187 yr by Giordano_Bruno

He was awful last night but it's a warm-up game. I've a feeling he's going to be a big player for us this season. Sarri needs to work on his head a little bit. You want your striker to be an assassin, what we have is a meek little girl. He doesn't scare defenders, he doesn't even rough them up a little bit. Basically he's a defender's dream. You'd love to play against him, because you can bully him, because you can get inside his head. Sarri needs to unpick his mind. There's a striker in there. I'm confident it will happen.

5 minutes ago, Davey Baby said:

He was awful last night but it's a warm-up game. I've a feeling he's going to be a big player for us this season. Sarri needs to work on his head a little bit. You want your striker to be an assassin, what we have is a meek little girl. He doesn't scare defenders, he doesn't even rough them up a little bit. Basically he's a defender's dream. You'd love to play against him, because you can bully him, because you can get inside his head. Sarri needs to unpick his mind. There's a striker in there. I'm confident it will happen.

I wish I shared your optimism. 

He looks a busted flush to me though, and as we saw with Torres, you can change the Manager to whoever you want but when they've lost it, they've lost it. 

I really hope I am wrong. 

if Morata stays the club had better hold on to Giroud, hes a useful back up as we saw at the tail end of last season, Tammy will be loaned and Mitchy makes # 3 (we need 3 strikers period).

28 minutes ago, mclovin83 said:

I wish I shared your optimism. 

He looks a busted flush to me though, and as we saw with Torres, you can change the Manager to whoever you want but when they've lost it, they've lost it. 

I really hope I am wrong. 

Or in Morata's case, it's possible he never had it to begin with. He was always a massive risk when we signed him. He was never number 1 striker at Real Madrid or Juventus and you can see why, he needs too many chances before he get's a goal. These chances he is given shouldn't be hard to take, but he's missing all of them. I have seen strikers in worse leagues who are more reliable in one v one situations.

I'm not giving up on him just yet, but if he doesn't get his act together right now, then he will cost us so many points, and we will have no choice but to give somebody else a try. It already feels like it's now or never for Morata.

Wonder what happened to @pacquiao who championed his cause in the window last year? Yet again he also firmly on the side of signing Bakayoko. Not his greatest summer.

We always knew Costa was never going to stay here for long and Drogba's second stint was only  good for the "romance factor".  We haven't  been able to replace our striker since 2012 to be honest, and overall, we've been the worst team in the central-forward position  for these last six years among the top six Premier League teams! 

 

39 minutes ago, mclovin83 said:

I wish I shared your optimism. 

He looks a busted flush to me though, and as we saw with Torres, you can change the Manager to whoever you want but when they've lost it, they've lost it. 

I really hope I am wrong. 

 

This isn't Torres. Torres was declining when he came to us, on the back of a bad injury. Similarly Shevchenko, a terrible injury. Morata's problems are all mental and that can be resolved, with the right management, although I'd agree Fernando's problems were psychological as well.

 

Morata scored 15 for us last season. A goal every 3 games. He missed a fair few games through injury and suspension. If he hadn't, we'd be talking 20 goals, in his debut season. It's not bad. He wasn't good enough, that much was clear. When the going got tough he went missing, and that angered me. Giroud was rightly played instead of him. It wasn't a disaster however. Far from it. There's room for improvement. I'm confident he'll improve. A new manager who allegedly improves players and who really works wonders with his strikers. A season under his belt in England. A point to prove. Age is on his side. I'm confident he'll improve.

 

Look. It was a bad penalty last night but had it gone in, and he'd done his little baby celebration, he'd have had his tail up and he may have gone on to score a couple more. We'd have people on here going over the top, just like they're going over the top now. It was a warm-up game, his wife's just given birth, he's just flown back. We have to cut him a bit of slack. 

 

Don't get me wrong I was cursing him last night. Mentally he's too weak. When he misses the pen the rest is inevitable, because he needs things to be going his way, he can't change things when they're not. He's a confidence player in other words. He's too fragile, mentally. Sarri will work on that. I believe him when he says he's not too concerned.

 

Morata's movement is excellent. That's why so many chances fall his way. Torres never got chances. I just don't think this is comparable.