What does it mean to overly rely on your physique? There are IMO several top players who wouldn't be anywhere near as good as they turned out to be had it not been for their impressive physique. You sort of do the best you can with the cards you have been dealt in the physique lottery.

jones wrote:

There's really no precedence as football probably has never seen a guy who at 16 was bullying grown men around like it was nothing, the same strengths however lead to him developing serious weaknesses in his game. If you want a comparison the closest you'd get are the youth teams from around the Gulf of Guinea (mainly Nigeria) who fade badly after promising early careers; Lukaku is obviously not playing against children but I predict a somewhat similar development.

I'm not saying he's going to implode, he'll surely carve a solid to good EPL career out for himself. There are many types of strikers with different skillsets, in my experience however those that rely overly on their physique rarely make very good high end strikers and they often get found out at top clubs too (Benteke at Pool, Bony at City, Gomez at Bayern etc). If we're getting a new striker for 50m+ might as well do it properly.

To counter your examples I'll raise you a certain Didier Drogba. Or even Christian Vieri.

They both had stellar careers.

Lukaku is the real deal.

I definitely do not buy Jones' Lukaku pessimissm. Only 5 men have hit 50 Premier League era goals before the age of 23. They are Rooney, Owen, Lukaku, Fowler and Cristiano. All of them went on to have excellent careers, with Owen and Fowler being held back by injury. This is such an usual accomplishment.

Lukaku's excellence extends far beyond the last few years at Everton. At West Brom where he scored 17 in 35. When he was a teenager using his big body to bully fully-grown professionals, he scored 33 in 73 appearances for Anderlecht. The bullying accusation would make sense if he was playing against kids, but he's been a professional since his 16th birthday.

Jed mentioned Drogba. This guy is about 3 years ahead of Drogba developmentally. It would be mental to ignore him if he's available.

That u23 stat literally means nothing, everyone knows he scores goals, that's not the problem with Lukaku.

He's a striker who scores goals. What problems do you want to make out of that? And that stat looks at hundreds of strikers who have come through the league - why would you claim it is meaningless?

Why is 50 the set number and why is 23 the set age? Looking at Lukaku as a whole this is pretty much his level, he will probably be performing the same aged 25 and so on.

You just have to look at the type of goals he scores rather than the amount.

Go on...

I'd take a guy who consistently scores around 20 league goals every season, no questions asked. Let's not make out that Lukaku is some sort of clogged either, because he clearly isn't. He is fast enough to be a threat in behind any back four, he is strong in the air, he shoots well, and he has improved his ability to hold up the ball and interact with his team mates a lot in the last year or so.

Jed wrote:

jones wrote:

There's really no precedence as football probably has never seen a guy who at 16 was bullying grown men around like it was nothing, the same strengths however lead to him developing serious weaknesses in his game. If you want a comparison the closest you'd get are the youth teams from around the Gulf of Guinea (mainly Nigeria) who fade badly after promising early careers; Lukaku is obviously not playing against children but I predict a somewhat similar development.

I'm not saying he's going to implode, he'll surely carve a solid to good EPL career out for himself. There are many types of strikers with different skillsets, in my experience however those that rely overly on their physique rarely make very good high end strikers and they often get found out at top clubs too (Benteke at Pool, Bony at City, Gomez at Bayern etc). If we're getting a new striker for 50m+ might as well do it properly.

To counter your examples I'll raise you a certain Didier Drogba. Or even Christian Vieri.

They both had stellar careers.

Lukaku is the real deal.

Drogba is a very strange example, he didn't develop into a top player until his late 20s.

As Ray said nobody doubts Lukaku's scoring prowess, people doubt whether he will improve his overall game significantly in the future and there are many reasons to assume he won't.

Well, most players at the age of 23 do not stop developing, so I'd say there is a stronger case to be made for Lukaku to indeed keep improving. Also, the bloke doesn't really have to develop his main job on the pitch - to score goals. He already does that at a very good rate.

apart from that 1 loan season at chelsea, he's played a heck of alot of first team football since he was 17. there's a case to be made that he'll be busted by the time he reaches his late 20s as well

scousers in for goetze

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/mar/28/liverpool-confident-signing-mario-gotze-jurgen-klopp-connection

i wonder if he'd take the risk of going there. depends if no-one else shows interest i suppose

jones wrote:

Jed wrote:

To counter your examples I'll raise you a certain Didier Drogba. Or even Christian Vieri.

They both had stellar careers.

Lukaku is the real deal.

Drogba is a very strange example, he didn't develop into a top player until his late 20s.

As Ray said nobody doubts Lukaku's scoring prowess, people doubt whether he will improve his overall game significantly in the future and there are many reasons to assume he won't.

What are those reasons?

Conversely, there are many reasons he actually WILL improve his overall game significantly.

1) He's 22 - no age for a striker especially one of his type

2) He's been improving year on year, putting up better numbers with every passing season

3) If he's playing with better players, at a CL level club, you can argue he'll improve more, and put up even better numbers

4) His attitude is spot on. He's ambitious and very career focused, as evidenced by his decision to leave his 'boyhood' club Chelsea for playing time

Lukaku just doesn't look like an elite talent to me. I accept that I might be wrong in this; time will tell. Most players don't keep on developing proportionally year by year though. If they did everyone would become great, and that's just not the case. People have a finite amount of talent and finite room for improvement. Better attitude, managers and systems will be able to make use of more of the margins for said talent, but there's a level cap.

Lukaku's strengths as a player have always (seemingly) been heavily connected to his athleticism, and he had the physique of a grown man at the age of 15. It's not surprising to me that he started to produce at a young age.

Most people who don't rate him say Lukaku don't "look" like an elite talent. I can understand that point of view. He seldom does anything special or look to have outrageous skills.

I just can't look past his goalscoring records and effectiveness in bring people into play currently, especially when we have so many duds up front.

Gazza M wrote:

scousers in for goetze

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/mar/28/liverpool-confident-signing-mario-gotze-jurgen-klopp-connection

i wonder if he'd take the risk of going there. depends if no-one else shows interest i suppose

Yeah I saw that. He's fallen out of favour at Bayern and it seems plausible he would go and play for Klopp again. The article also says we are interested. An obvious talent. I wouldn't be unhappy, but I'm not sure it's our first priority.

To put it mildly I will be over the moon with Gotze.

Yeah, same. I'd be pretty pissed at Arsenal if we let him go to Liverpool, especially considering our own options.

Isn't Gotze on close to 200k at Bayern? Or was that a myth?