He's a beast. Should have stayed on the pitch instead of fecking Aspas.
Diego Costa
- Thread starter MJJ
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Great player, punchable face.
Spain will have him lead the line every game now, surely? Not sure if that was their original plan!
He looks like a bad guy from a spaghetti western.
On what basis? Its definitely not on goal scoring.
Watching his training antics you can understand Conte.
You can't genuinely believe that's the reason he left?
Yes I do.
If Niall sent you a PM telling you that you not needed here then you would leave, wouldn’t you? It was the same for Costa.
Niall would never do that. I'm the Messi here, not the Diego Costa.
When on good form and right motivation, he's that good. Beast, solo leading the line, and quality powerful striker.
Love seeing his duel against Rojo, way last time.
Love seeing his duel against Rojo, way last time.
Everyone who has played with Costa seems to really like him. By most accounts is a friendly lunatic.
Came here to say this. I suffered on fantasy league because of this cnut
sorry to hear that
Shouldn't have taken him off imo. Big coaching mistake. He was having a great game and they needed his verve to match Ronaldo.
I don't follow.
People especially those genius goofing off in weird way all the time. They have their own way of doing things. Unless it's a case of unsettleing the dressing room (players around Diego Costa doesn't mind as far as video, and any stories about him), it's just that, goofing off. If this is reason for Conte to throw Costa out the door despite what Costa can offer, then Conte mentality is more the concern...
I'm sure the groundskeepers love him at every training facility around the world he s ever showed up at.
Agree with this. Forcing him out was a real blunder. I don’t even like him as a person but totally respect his play.
Like RVP disappeared for us in the second half of 12/13 I presume? His only title winning season as a talisman season.
Costa is also a lot like Drogba in that he does a lot of work outside of goalscoring, which does involve expending a lot of energy. Same with Rooney a lot of the time. That doesn't necessarily mean they're any lesser than strikers who are solely or mostly about goals. Also, I do feel it's hard to be scoring throughout the season unless you play for a very attack oriented season. For example it's easier to do that Klopp's Liverpool than Conte's Chelsea.
Personally I do really like Costa. Been an outstanding CF over the years. Doesn't get enough credit for how good a footballer he is.
As a Chelsea fan who watched him every single game for 3 years, I was extremely disappointed in his half a season antics. When Costa is on form, he is absolutely devastating. But when he's off form, you'll be hard pressed to find a worse footballer. Can't even complete simple short passes, suddenly can't hold up the ball anymore, misses sitters he used to score in his sleep and converts all that frustration into even more fights on the pitch than he usually does.
You can't claim it's because of Conte's Chelsea either because he scored 37 the season before joining Chelsea and that was under Simeone's Atletico. In hindsight, it was probably a one off season. I don't think he even scored more than 1 CL goal for us. Great striker but he's by no means a once in a generation player who can't be replaced.
Was there ever a question?
Thing is even when he doesn't score he does a lot of stuff, puts defenders on their toes and can be a handful for any defense in world football. Chelsea fans may not admit it but they really do miss his presence up front and even in his dry moments there's the possibility that he down-tooled.
His good season was not a one-off as he showed before he joined Chelsea that he was that good. Players have off periods but it's strange to claim that it was a one-off.
The best bet would have been for an intermediary to settle whatever scores there were between him and Conte because you'd be hard pressed to find a better CF for reasonable value.
Love him. Perfect number 9. Reminds me of Shearer, although not in that league. A proper menace. Aggressive powerful works hard and scores goals.
He got away with a foul for the (first?) goal but he had a ton of work to do after that still. What a finish!
Spain needs a bully to give them another dimension to their usual pass-you-to-death, Costa is that dimension.
Go on Diego!
Spain needs a bully to give them another dimension to their usual pass-you-to-death, Costa is that dimension.
Go on Diego!
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Who cares about the foul. VAR starts to completely ruin football if you ask me. It's a man's game Pepe almost got an oscar
On the basis of being a key part of title winning squads. Copa Del Rey 2013, La Liga 2014, Premier League 2015 and 2017, Europa League 2018.
Kane's title count is still at zero and you can't even argue about Costa having played in better teams. Spurs have a better team than Atletico and comparable quality to the Chelsea side.
Now your comparing clubs, not individuals. There isn't much more as an individual Kane can do.
It is fair if you are comparing which striker is better at dragging his team over the line, performing better when it counts.
In the last 3 FA Cup exits, Kane played every minute, scoring just 1 goal in 270 minutes. That is pretty poor for a world class striker.
Don't want to critizise Kane too much, think he is class and one of the best around. Just want to give valid reasons why Costa has been better in world football until now.
Is he as bad as I think he is?
It’s not really the same thing as RVP though is it? You’re comparing a one off season for an aging player that was “the final piece” and someone who’s living off of a reputation during the prime of his career who downed tools 3 years in a row at various points for 3 different reasons. I’d agree with you about Drogba comparison except he’s technically inconsistent even when he’s in form. When he’s out of form he looks like someone who just started kicking a ball that day. He’s in the same bracket as Cavani for me. History will shine on them bc they have really good numbers, but I wouldn’t really trust them to lead the line.
If Costa was an absolute monster who would be hard to replace then I guarantee you Roman would have told Conte to feck off when he wanted to bin Costa. But he's not. He's a great striker. But there are a good number of great strikers you could get on the market that would do as good if not a better job than Costa does. You'd just have to spend big money.
Loved Costa when he was here but all things considered, he never really endeared himself to Chelsea fans the way guys like Drogba did. Even the likes of Crespo (who was barely in a Chelsea shirt), Shevchenko (believe it or not) and Anelka were more loved by Chelsea fans. Hell, it would shock you to know that Fernando Torres had more love from Chelsea fans than Costa did. It's not like we haven't had a striker who's gone spells without scoring before. Torres aside, even Drogba had his moments like that, especially early on in his Chelsea career. It was just the constant whining and sulking on the pitch and fighting and screaming in refs faces and the embarrassing playacting on top of that that ruined some of his goodwill with the fans.
You say even when he doesn't score he does other things. Yes, you're correct. But that's when he's on form. As I said, off form Costa is one of the worst footballers you'll find in European top flight football. I can't count how many attacks he broke down simply because he couldn't make the simple pass that would put Hazard/Willian through on goal or put them in a position to lay an easy tap in for him to score. Take it from someone who watched every minute Costa played in a Chelsea shirt. His off form football was quite simply embarrassing and I think the reason why fans didn't complain too much when Conte booted him out.
Of course that isn't to downplay the contributions he made to our 14/15 and 16/17 titles. When he did score, his goals were absolutely massive for us. Especially in 2017. That said, I can name 8 strikers in world football better than Costa and at least 2 of them are attainable for Chelsea (Higuain & Icardi). Still feel Morata will do very well under Sarri but I won't be losing any sleep if he leaves either. Lord knows he gave me nightmares of Torres last season.
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I don't know. I actually loved Costa and would take him again in a heartbeat. Also, regarding the Kane Comparison, I'm yet to see anything similar to the Costa of the season Atletico won the title from Kane yet. I don't think he has reached that level yet in my opinion.
Such a good striker. When he’s on it one of best out and out strikers in europe.
Point is Abrahamovic thought he was right to allow Conte replace Costa with Morata and he judged wrongly. I doubt that Roman would willingly shoot himself on the foot. And guess what? You spent big money. At the time the decision seemed weird to me because that position was sorted and yet you had to spend really big to "fix" it.
I think the words in your post, "he never really endeared himself to Chelsea fans" says a lot really. Maybe you guys are not entirely sincere about his impact on your performances because of his unlikableness? And yes I agree with that part, his attitude indeed does stink. But then we are not talking about his attitude here but his impact on your performances and if you're honest you'd have to admit that Morata for Costa was a poor decision.
Regarding his performances, you say that whenever he is poor he is really poor and indeed I admit that you have watched him play for your lot more than I, but still yet you'd be hard pressed to find 4 strikers in the epl better than him during his spell with Chelsea. How often were his bad spells not counting 15/16 season where it appeared as though a lot of your players down-tooled? In your last two title winning seasons, he was massive for you guys and even under Conte, I thought whilst Hazard got most of the plaudits, he was usually the guy that would get you out of trouble or score that one crucial goal that would decide the game.
You see saying that Higuain and Icardi are better strikers is plain fictitious. Costa was instrumental to winning 2 epl titles for your team in 3 years. I don't know if Icardi will be able to do that honestly. Even when Morata got on board, we were told he was better than Costa so I'm not sure of Higuain would even be able to do for you guys in your two title winning seasons.
That's a testament to the current state of the market. 3 years a go, a Morata (in the state we bought him) wouldn't have cost more than 30m. You can hardly spend in today's market without spending big.
It's not like he was ridiculously good and insanely consistent the way Suarez was for Liverpool. If Suarez performed like Costa, I bet you he would have been defended a lot less by Liverpool fans than the way he was. Costa wasn't that. Be honest with yourself. And as for Morata, if we're being entirely fair to him, he has had just one season as a starting number 9 and did play with a back injury for a good bit of the 2nd half of the season. As I said earlier, I won't write him off completely until I see him play under Sarri (look what he did with Higuain and Mertens). But if he leaves, I won't lose sleep. For reference, Drogba would have been considered a flop if we sold him after his first two seasons at Chelsea.
How often were his bad spells? How about from January to May? And that was both times we won the title. The first time I would partly blame on Mourinho because we were riding high in the season and looked untouchable until Spurs out of nowhere pasted us 5-3 on new year day and Jose panicked and reverted into a very defensive set up so there weren't as much chances being created. Didn't stop Costa from laying goose eggs when the chances did come though.
In Conte's title season, after his absolutely devastating run in October to December, he went MONTHS without scoring a single goal. I think he had something like 15 goals in 15 matches before the new year and only managed to limp to 20 at the end of the season. Trust me, you shouldn't try to argue this with me because I remember everything very clearly.
That's another debate on it's own. Personally, I think the only thing Costa has over Higuain is that Costa more often than not will come up with a big goal for you in the really big moments. Higuain has a lot of failures in that respect (though that's not to discount the successes he has also had but you can't ignore the WC final and the 2 Copa finals). But as far as consistent scoring? It's not even close. And Icardi has both btw. But all this is deviating from my initial point. Anyway, I don't think there's anything I can say further about this.
If the mods are gracious enough to do a poll on who's the better attacker between Costa and Icardi or Costa and Higuain, you'd realise that you wouldn't have much company. Don't allow Higuain's serie A goals number deceive you. Okay who do you think is the better forward between Higuain and Morata? Please be true to yourself if you could only sign one of Morata, Icardi, Higuain and Costa on a bossman, who would it be? [/QUOTE]
My responses are in bold font.
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