Lukaku and Matic must be considered successful signings due to the impact they had on the team last season. How can anyone dispute that?
Lukaku? Sorry, for the money we spent on him, his contributions are poor. Without looking at the fee, then I’d say his contributions are average.
Look at the players I compared him to, and see how much they cost and or how good they were in their first season. Mane once carried Liverpool’s attack and was right considered one of the best players in the league. I don’t even need to say anything about Salah.
Or maybe you are right and I’m being too harsh on him. Then again, he scored more goals in Everton so my expectations were not out of order. Or maybe I worded what I meant the wrong way.
I can compromise a bit though. Lukaku is not world class but he certainly has contributed well enough to force an improvement in the amount of goals we scored.
We created the same amount or even less chances than last season but we became more clinical. This change resulted in more goals, so we finished higher.
One might say we were always going to start putting our chances away more effectively in Mourinho’s second season. Our chance conversion rate in the first season was an anomaly after all. It is also fair to claim that most of our players in attack were always going to do better with scoring after a year since they now understood Mourinho’s tactics better.
But I’m willing to rate Lukaku a bit higher given that he was the only player we brought in for our attack. But then begs the question, can one player really have that much impact?
I think I’ve said enough on Lukaku
Matic, on the other hand... has not been an outright success. I’m not even going to move an inch here. I know that not many here will agree with me but I’m not surprised. Matic is an average signing considering the performances he needed to improve on.
What exactly did Matic do? He’s a DM. Did our defense improve? No. In fact, it got worse. We conceded more chances with him shielding our back line than we did when Herrera. We also conceded more goals.
There’s something else, Herrera contributed more in attack for us than Matic.
Only if you can somehow prove that Matic is the reason we started putting away our chances, then you might have a point albeit a small one.
I believe Herrera is an average player, but he had a very good season when Mourinho played him as the defensive midfielder. Matic has just been lucky to come in and play when we became clinical. Our improvement is no way down to him. He’s a decent player and has been an average sigining, nothing more.
People who look at Mourinho objectively can debate your statements. Very easily I’d say.