Mirallas

Truth be told, I have never seen Vermaelen play a bad game. Then again I have not seen a very large amount of games with Vermaelen in it. He is often injured. But when he's not, he's rock solid.

Not mine, dude.... really not mine.

You know, the typical stuff... Change 6 players in the starting lineup, switch captains, blablabla, the way it always goes. That's probably how it'll be handled.

Feyenoord - Man City was 'only 4-0'... Anderlecht, down to 10 men, lost to Bayern Munich at 3-0 at the allianz arena this week. There's not even a class gap in favor of Atalanta in this game...

Atalanta look like they were expecting a totally different game.

idk about that just yet... Were only a month into this season, seems a little soon. I'm not saying we should go all Martinez about it, but I'd be a tad more patient.

This was certainly not how I was expecting it'd be going... :/

Who are the best keepers around then of whom you can say they comfortably overclass Lloris? Neuer and who else?

Stoke somehow always manages to sign pretty crazy names... I do wonder why they don't really ever manage to compete for European football. Affelay, Shaqiri, Jese, Martins Indi, ... the first 3 played quite often for Bercelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid and are still at a prime age. They have Shawcross as well. Having signed Zouma on loan, they can technically put a top class line-up on the pitch. Shoupo Moting and Joe Allen have got pedigree as well...

I honestly don't know if it's done on purpose to try and grab attention as a little publicity stunt or whether it's genuinely careless 'journalism'... but the tabloids and other media are just so full of desinformation it's ridiculous. If you write Lukaku is a devoted muslim... you must've been purposely trying to avoid watching/listening to/reading anything that has to do with football. The guy makes a cross sign after a goal or at the start of a game, he always talks about how he reads the Bible every day and dedicates many occasions to God. In Lukaku's case it's virtually impossible to not notice he's a christian. I'm starting to think tabloids are writing wrong information on purpose just so people would start talking about it in order to get some publicity. Not even gonna name the tabloid in this case Either that or it's an old fashioned case of "which one of the black guys was it again?".

Didn't see the game, what position did he play in? CF?

Ah yeah ofc. Mixed them up. They are often named in one thought, because they were both such big stadium disasters and both involved Liverpool FC.

Hillsborough (edit: Heysel, not Hillsborough) actually caused EFC not to be able to play European Football for 3 consecutive years of qualifying for it in the late 80's. All English teams were banned from European football for a few years because of Hillsborough... so you can figure how impactful the consequences of that ban ended up being for this football club and everything Everton missed out on

Well Rooney will bring Everton something the fans have kind of missed: a star who the fans can really connect with. Lukaku on the other hand can give ManU what they need: a strong physical presence in center forward and consistent goal scoring.

Question on my mind is which of the 3 was the one who had the final say in the Rooney bit of the Lukaku deal (assuming it's one big deal).

Very little reason not to admire his football. It is just the fact that he never really bothered to make himself likable. Only things we ever heard from Lukaku when he said something was about transferring, maybe going to bigger clubs, yadayada. He may be a lot more honest than most other footballers, but fans don't wanna hear that stuff. It gets annoying to be reminded of not being the best of the best where you'd rather hear him say nice things about the club and the people. But he never did that despite his prime position as the club's top striker. And that's why we're torn. Despite the fact that he's simply the best thing that happened to EFC in a very long time, purely from the combined sporty and financial point of view. And that's fine. It's part of the whole game as well.

Illustrates the difference between Lukaku and a fan favorite player right there. You'd never hear that from big Rom would you

hehe funny signing though But I wish him all the best and hope him and club have a heck of a season. I wonder what position he'll play in in the line-up. edit: props to him for not going to China, Arabia or USA for mere money.

Lukaku does divide opinions, not only between EFC fans, but most fans are even conflicted about him in their own minds On paper he has everything going for him, superb number of goals, huge return on investment, definitely in the second half of his stay in Liverpool he's brought top football onto the pitch on a rather consistent basis. Strictly taken he's been better for EFC than Tim Cahill. Having such an impact on the pitch puts you in a favourable position to do something with that when you communicate, and Lukaku never used that. He just never bothered with it. So when the only thing you ever hear from your most prolific striker is blabla about bigger clubs, potential transfer, probably leaving, and so on, that only reminds the fans time after time that EFC is not among the global top in football. You don't wanna hear that, it's annoying after a while, you wanna hear your striker say nice things about EFC, the city, the fans, share fun moments with them and so on. So Lukaku just made himself look like a mercenary who has no connection with his own club. And to add to that, he actually did express a lot of love for his club when he was at Chelsea. Some of the fans then try looking for rational excuses to not like him in his football, like the old meme 'bad first touch' or 'lazy' or 'doesn't always put in a shift', which compared to the total picture is pretty trivial. I'm pretty sure it's purely an emotional matter for the fans. Luckily for him, ManU fans are a bit more used to mercenary antics than EFC fans.

Besides the unlikely and downright ridiculous rethoric that Everton would have gotten just as many goals out of some other striker, ignoring the fact no one scored as many goals and on such a consistent basis for EFC since the beginning of the EPL, the fact still stands that he was bought out for twenty something million pounds, and now sold on to ManU for 87 million, more than likely recovering anything he cost the club in the meantime, if all the merchandise didn't do that already. All-round, Lukaku has been one of the biggest blessings to EFC in a long time.

Lots of goals and at the end, all costs recovered + more. Woohoo! But yeah I always thought it to be weird of the reporters to suggest Chelsea as the main transfer candidate... I mean from Chelsea's point of view it's not that outlandish, but from Romelu's point of view it'd just be a huge mindfuck, and one I'm sure he'd rather just let go of. Manchester United, a completely new club, does seem more logical. Although with ManU being the 3rd club in the EPL he's contracted by, and the 4th he's playing for... does make him a mercenary. He wouldn't quite have had this issue if he went to Germany or Italy. That said, Manchester is close enough for Rom not to have to overthrow his personal life.

That's a lot of money... I assume the suits know what they are doing..

Heh, I just found out that Lukaku's girlfriend is the sister of a girl who had a crush on me in early high school Small world. I kinda had a bit of a crush on her too, but we were both too shy to tell each other

Told ya edit: 10/10 photoshop timing

No worries, lads!