I think he left with a point to prove.
Romelu Lukaku | Napoli watch
- Thread starter Samid
- Start date
It's fair to say he had the hump here, wasn't trying his hardest and gave up.
Anyway, he's doing good and we're not exactly missing him.
Think most of it is confidence and fitness as you said. Even last season he had a great spell for us under Ole before he got injuried.
He would score 20+ goals in the PL too if he still was here.
That's irrelevant to your point. I mean, Immobile is Serie A current top scorer with 20 goals, he is decent but nothing exceptional, Serie A isn't what it used to be it's not a low scoring league anymore and average players are regularly scoring a good amount of goals.
In one thread, the reason Ronaldo isn't putting up his usual numbers is because serie A is the hardest league to score goals in.
In another, Lukaku is only scoring goals because the league is dog shit.
I think Ciro is an anomaly here, he's so far ahead of the rest not just in Serie A but leagues across Europe. The rest of the top scorers are the likes of Martinez, Ronaldo and Lukaku, upto you if you think they are average.
Ronaldo is getting old and his current team isn't entirely built for him to score 50 goals per seasons.The league isn't shite but we are talking about a league where the likes of Zapata, Dzeko and Immobile have had relatively high scoring seasons.
If you use the coefficients as a guide then the Italian league is closer to the Dutch, Portuguese and French leagues in quality than it is to the English and Spanish currently.
https://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/uefarankings/country/#/yr/2020
It seems that it trades on its historical prestige for many rather than its current level.
I'm not saying that they are average, though Ronaldo had a few players above him last season in terms of goalscoring. In the last 5 to 6 years every seasons you have at least a couple of painfully average players(Quagliarella, Zapata, Belotti or Immobile) that score a fair amount of goals in Serie A, the league isn't some sort of ultimate test for strikers, like every other leagues good fit and form play a massive role in players individual performances.
There is a reason why Lingard is trying for a move to Italy, the game is a notch slow paced which helps these technically less gifted players. Who can make up for a bad first touch with physicality, also a reason why Lukaku is scoring and looking less out of place.
And they are saved by Juventus, that coefficient isn't even an accurate image of the rest of the league.
How can you be sure? He's managed it once in his whole career and only managed 16 in his best season for us.
In fact if we disregard his last season here (where he was abysmal and was benched) and only look at his first season where he was the undisputed #9 and before he took such flak - you can see his PL numbers aren't great when compared to our forward line.
17/18 Season
Lukaku = 179 minutes per goal (1 goal in 10 games against the top 6)
This Season
Rashford = 134 minutes per goal (6 goals in 6 games against the top 6)
Martial = 160 minutes per goal (2 goals in 4 games against the top 6)
Greenwood = 104 minutes per goal (0 goals in 4 games against the top 6*) *only 132 minutes total
So even with Pogba, in a team that finished 2nd in the league and as first choice throughout the season without injury, Lukaku didn't manage to outperform our forwards so far this season in his best year here. This is before we even talk about attributes such as first touch, link-up play, work rate and fitness. Anyone saying he would improve our frontline above Martial and Rashford is an idiot.
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His hold up play will have improved as a direct consquence of moving to a slower pace league.
Danny Ings has a far better goals per minute ratio than both of our main strikers this season. Does that prove anything?
It proves that he is having a pretty good season.
That he's better than Lukaku probably.
I'm comparing what Lukaku did for United and what our current forwards are doing for United without him. You can chuck in outliers for other teams but it's pretty irrelevant.
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Never said it was the ultimate test, but it's not an easy league people are making out.
You take anything seriously that goes on in the Ronaldo or Messi threads?
Ronaldo isnt putting up his usual numbers because hes nearly 35. I live in Italy, most of the teams here are borderline Championship level.
It's a top 5 league, none of them are easy. That's where most top players play or are developed. But within the context of these leagues Serie A isn't far from Ligue 1 and both are less competitively dense than La Liga or the PL. The part that bothers me is the underrating of Ligue 1 while overrating Serie A, which leads to people misrating players or teams.
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Cafology
It proves that he is on a hot streak on a team that is having a good period.
So Jesse wants to go to Italy so he can physically make up for the weaknesses in his game
Well you can never be sure and it does depend on the team he would play in and the manager. We would be way better as a team with Lukaku around though if you discount possible negative effects in the dressing room that I do not know about. Even if Ole didn't know how to use him well he would still help us out.
There is no doubt about the fact that the last 1.5 years didn't work out well for him with us. Although he is not really alone to have struggled near the end with Mourinho. Half our squad lost confidence and tactics didn't help anyone.
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Back when serie A was the best in the world plenty of players of Zapata, Dzeko and Immobile's level(btw, we're talking great-but-not-quite-world class here) had big scoring seasons.
Tbf half the PL is borderline Championship level too. Championship is a pretty strong league
As to Cristiano, it's probably more to do with juventus than anything else
And likewise, whenever a player changes league people make so much of it but the truth is his team(s) have a lot more to do with performance than leagues
Plus, it's not like he's all of a sudden become shite. He's only slightly off his usual goal a game ratio (0.9 to be exact).
None of these players are great but that's beside the point, the point is that this level and profile of player will score goals, it's not a particularly hard league to score goals in and it's not a shit league either. In my opinion the reality of the top leagues is that overall the levels are close, it's a matter of fine margins and mainly suitability. If a player fits with his own team and with the tactical culture of the league then he will most likely be successful.
If you take Immobile as an example, he struggled at Dortmund after having a pretty good season in Italy, he wasn't a different player and the Bundesliga isn't a vastly better league(if it's even better), it's just that he was a bad fit.
That he is also better than Lukaku
Depends what you mean by top leagues. If you mean the PL and La Liga then yes, they are close. Serie A and the Bundesliga are a clear level below them though, and Ligue 1 a step further still.
A player like Lukaku who has done well in the PL without being incredible will do very well in any of the lower tiers.
Happy he has left. Was risky by Ole but good for the club and the canteen staff.
We should move to the conclusion that goals alone are not the best means of judging a strikers worth. Was Lukaku's ability to score ever really the issue?
I'm talking about top leagues in the world, the levels that you created here are actually close in the Football world because these are the top 5 leagues in the world, in a vaccum I agree with your ranking but it's important to remember that these levels aren't miles apart.
It's good to see him do well. 18 in 25 with only 3 pens is a great return.
New league, new country, new team, etc... all factors not to be underestimated. Also there's still some dross in that Inter team, especially during their injury crisis. The likes of Biraghi, Vecino, D'Ambrosio, an ageing Borja Valero ...
New league, new country, new team, etc... all factors not to be underestimated. Also there's still some dross in that Inter team, especially during their injury crisis. The likes of Biraghi, Vecino, D'Ambrosio, an ageing Borja Valero ...
He’s a great goalscorer. That fact can’t be denied.
It is relevant when talking about interchanging players between those 5 leagues though. Any current PL player is almost guaranteed to do well in Ligue 1 for example, whereas a Ligue 1 player has to work very hard or possess particular attributes to do well in the PL. Lukaku was guaranteed to be a star in anything other than the PL or La Liga.
That statement isn't true though and it's based on nothing.
Plenty of players have come to England from France and found it more difficult (Ibrahimovic), and plenty went the other way and became world beaters (Depay). I can't think of any who found it easier in England.
They were just two examples. There are lots more.
There must be very very few great players around then if you think so
Immobile struggled at dortmund mainly because he hated dortmund. Hard to do your job well when you want to be somewhere else all the time...
But anyways, good players will generally be good in whatever league you put them so long as they have the right conditions to do well
Wait... Does that mean we've been overrating Smalling's performances in Roma?