Gunners hit by food poisoning

Arsenal were hit by food poisoning in Shanghai that ruled several key players out of their pre-season friendly with Bayern Munich on Wednesday, manager Arsene Wenger said.

The Frenchman revealed the sickness that had swept the Arsenal camp, coupled with the severe heat in China and long flights, made for far-from-ideal preparations for another taxing campaign.
Wenger was shorn of Olivier Giroud because of food poisoning, then captain Per Mertesacker pulled out of the game just moments before kick-off because he too fell ill with the same problem.
New signing Sead Kolasinac also had to come off before the break, while Aaron Ramsey and Theo Walcott were only substitutes because they were sick.

Wenger's ailing men were outplayed for long periods by Bayern before salvaging a last-gasp 1-1 draw and then winning 3-2 on penalties.
Arsenal were particularly poor in the first half in the 36 degrees Celsius (97F) heat and Wenger admitted that the extreme conditions in Shanghai were "a shock" after flying in from Australia, which is in its winter.

"I was a bit scared that tonight we could have big problems and in fact in the first half we suffered a bit," said Wenger.
"Ramsey finished the game, but Walcott, Kolasinac, Mertesacker, Giroud, they all had a little food poisoning."Wenger said the club did not know what caused the food poisoning.
Wenger added of the punishing preseason schedule that many top European clubs now undertake to far-flung destinations for commercial reasons: "If you ask me is it ideal physically to prepare? I'd say certainly not.

"Has it got other advantages? Yes because we can meet fans all over the world so that is very positive."
Reserve goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez was the unlikely hero for Wenger and Arsenal, saving Juan Bernat's soft spot-kick after substitute Alex Iwobi nodded in the leveller right at the end of normal time.

Robert Lewandowski took just nine minutes to fire Bayern ahead from the penalty spot as they outplayed Arsenal, before Iwobi's late intervention meant the game went straight to penalties.
Both sides fielded a mixture of first-team regulars and reserves, with new Bayern signing James Rodriguez and new Arsenal striker Alexandre Lacazette starting.
Bayern play AC Milan in Shenzhen, southern China, in their next warm-up game. - Sky Sports

Jose 'not happy' with window

Jose Mourinho says Manchester United are struggling to get their transfer business done in this summer's "difficult market".

United have secured two of their manager's four targets in Romelu Lukaku and Victor Lindelof and are close to striking a deal for Inter winger Ivan Perisic.
But United were unable to reach an agreement for Real Madrid striker Alvaro Morata, and Mourinho told ESPN inflated prices are leaving some players "impossible" to buy.

"We always want more," he said. "We always feel there is room to improve, and I cannot say that I am happy with our transfer window.
"What I can also say is that it is a difficult transfer window and I don't blame anyone - it is just a reality of things. The market is going in such a direction that many players are difficult to get, not to say impossible.

"What I will say is that, a long time ago, we thought about four players to strengthen our squad, but it is really hard to do it. If we do the third and forget the fourth, I would be quite happy with that because I know it is difficult.

"The market ends on August 31 so there is plenty of time, but obviously the objective for me as manager is always to have the players as soon as possible and try to coach them in the team and develop the team with them."

Two Imams in court for allegedly gang-raping two students in Lagos

Two Islamic teachers identified as Kamaledeen Alade and Hammed Adebayo were on Wednesday arraigned before a Surulere Chief Magistrate Court in Lagos for allegedly raping two girls between the age of 14 and 16.

‎Alade, 32, and Adebayo 27, were arraigned on a four count charge of conspiracy, rape, sexual penetration and application of charm.

‎The Police prosecutor, Sergeant Anthonia Osayande told the court that Alade was the founder of a group where youths attended to learn the Quran, while Adebayo was an assistant to Alade, in tutoring the youths.
Osayande said the accused persons and one other, now at large, committed the offences at No. 24, Amosun Street, Sari-Iganmu area of the state on July 11 at about 10.05 a.m.

According to the police prosecutor, Alade alongside the other accused persons gang-raped the 14-year-old while he allowed Adebayo to rape the 16-year-old.

Osayande said, “They conspired among themselves and did have sexual intercourse turn-by-turn with the girls, after which they forcefully applied charms on their necks.
“One of the girls who could not bear the pains confessed the incident to her parents, which led to their arrest.’’

Osayande said the offences contravened Sections 127(1), 137, 261 and 411 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.

When the charges were read to both accused persons, they pleaded not guilty.
Against this backdrop, the Chief Magistrate, Aro Lambo granted the accused bail in the sum of N200, 000 each, with two sureties each in like sum.- Daily Post

Widow banished for having sex on late husband’s bed

For allegedly having sex with a man on her late husband’s matrimonial bed, a 70 woman been banished from her community.

The widow Mrs Maria Okoh, it was gathered, was allegedly caught by her granddaughter allegedly having sex with the 30 year old man said to be  her lover at Amaudo Nkpoghoro village, Afikpo North Local Government Area of Ebonyi State.

In Afikpo, it is a considered a taboo for a widow to make love on her late husband matrimonial bed.
Maria’s  grand daughter was said to have gone to her grandmother’s house to give her some food items which she bought for her when she saw the 30 year old man making love with the grandmother.

She immediately raise alarm and immediately reported the matter to some members of the community who reported it to elders in the area.

Some of the villagers immediately held the woman and the man and dragged them out of the house chanting disgraceful songs on them.
The villagers paraded the widow and the man round the community while chanting disgraceful songs  as punishment for their act.

The woman was allegedly banished from the community after the parade.
One of the villagers, Egwu Azubuike said  the woman would have faced  greater punishment if her husband was still alive.
He noted  that the act has brought shame to the widow’s family, adding that the widow was among the most respected women in the community
before the incident.

Meanwhile, according to the community’s custom, the woman will  give three goats as fine  to appease the land before she will be accepted back. -The Nation

Corruption dynasty !!! We’ll defend Tinubu’s dynasty, says Ambode on LG poll

Akinwunmi Ambode, governor of Lagos state, says he and faithful of the All progressives Congress (APC) will defend the dynasty of Bola Tinubu, national leader of the party, during the forthcoming local government election.

Speaking at Lagos house, Ikeja, during the presentation of flags to the chairman and vice-chairmanship candidates of the APC, Ambode said a win for the party in all the elective positions would sustain the virtues which Tinubu stand for.
“This course is a course for the Asiwaju dynasty. So, we stand up today to say that we are here to defend that dynasty in totality,” Ambode said.
Ambode also appealed to aggrieved party members to bury their hatchet.

The outcome of the primary election had sparked crisis but the governor who admitted that some things were not done in the right manner, said any crack would be detrimental to the progress of not just the party but the state.
“All the things that we have done wrong, I want to say sorry, and I want to appeal to all members of the party. If we break the house, there would be no further canopy. So it’s better to call the plumber, the bricklayer, the electrician to come and do repair works, so that there would be somewhere for us to lie our head and sleep,” he said.

“I know there have been a lot of misgivings that has taken place, but what is important is for us to build the house together, thereafter we can do aesthetics to the windows and the doors so that those who are standing would be able to sit.
“This is like a gathering of peaceful co-existence. Wherever it is that we have had cracks, there are still more than a 1001 positions to compensate and also placate them that left in a negative way.”

He also urged all candidates of the APC go all out and ensure total victory for the party.
“It is better to cement the next four years through these chairmen and also complement the efforts of the next two years so that we can get another six years,” he said.
“So, if we decide because of disagreement or misunderstanding to destroy just two years out of eight years, there would be nothing left to show for the efforts.”

He urged candidates to utilise the next 72 hours to rally massive support from the electorate in their various councils. - cable Nigeria

Mama corruption !!! Court orders forfeiture of Banana Island property linked to Diezani

A federal high court in Lagos has ordered the interim forfeiture of an estate in Banana Island reportedly owned by Diezani Alison-Madueke, former minister of petroleum.

The court also ordered the temporary seizure of $3.7m in a Zenith bank account allegedly owned by the former minister.
The order followed an ex parte application filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) seeking forfeiture of the assets.

Anselem Ozioko, the EFCC counsel who filed the application, alleged that the money used for the purchase of the property was laundered.
“Nothing could be more suspicious than someone keeping such huge amounts in her apartment. Why was she doing that? To avoid attention,” he told the court.

“We are convinced beyond reasonable doubts because, as of the time this happened, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke was still in public service as the minister of petroleum resources.”
After listening to his submission, Chuka Obiozor, the judge, gave a temporary order for the forfeiture of the property and the money to the government. He then adjourned till August 7 for anyone to a make case for the assets.

Last Friday, the US department of justice filed an application seeking the re-possession of assets valued at $144 million linked to Alison-Madueke.
The former minister allegedly received the assets as bribes from two businessmen – Kola Aluko and Jide Omokore – for the award of oil contracts.- Cable Nigeria 

A history of why the US is the only rich country without universal health care

For now, at least, the health-care fight in the US is over. The Senate bill replacing president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act has collapsed after two more Republican senators withdrew their support, leaving the ruling party without a majority. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to repeal Obamacare entirely, with a two-year delay so his party can negotiate a new bill, but several Republicans oppose that too.

That leaves the US with Obamacare, whose signal achievement was to cut by 20 million (pdf) the number of Americans without health insurance; the Republican plan would have entirely reversed those gains. But Obamacare still leaves nearly 30 million people not covered and, as Republicans complain, burdens middle-class Americans with higher insurance premiums and the government with higher subsidies.

So why does the US, the only industrialized nation without universal health coverage, also have not only the highest health-care spending in the world—both in absolute terms and as a share of GDP—but also one of the highest levels of government spending on health care per person? And how did it come to be this way?
The answer is that the lack of universal coverage and high costs are intimately linked—both economically and historically.
Single-payer health-care (in which the government pays for universal coverage, typically through taxes) helps keep costs down for two reasons: It means that the government can regulate and negotiate the price of drugs and medical services, and it eliminates the need for a vast private health-insurance bureaucracy.

Currently, the US spends two to three times as much per capita on health care as most industrialized countries.
Of this burden, an estimated two thirds falls on the government’s shoulders, when one accounts for entitlements (Medicare and Medicaid), the cost of health insurance for government workers, and tax credits that subsidize private insurance plans for other people.“Most Americans have publicly funded health care,” either in full or in part,says David Himmelstein, professor of public health at CUNY and author of the estimate. “The government spends much more than other countries, but it’s an opaque system.” The government’s role is mostly to subsidize the astronomical costs set by the for-profit market.
Many Americans think their system is expensive because it’s very good. They are wrong: The US ranks 28th, below almost all other rich countries, when it comes to the quality of its healthcare assessed by UN parameters (pdf, p. 13).

But how did America get here?

When did the country diverge from other industrialized nations and, rather than offering universal health coverage, built up a system that relied on private insurance?

It wasn’t one moment, says Karen Palmer, professor of health science at Simon Fraser University, but rather, “a series of decisions, turning points, and cascading events.” Though until World War I there had been some attempts by socially liberal governments to follow the examples of Germany and others, they were met with opposition from doctors, insurance companies, businesses, and even some conservative labor organizations, which considered state-sponsored health care paternalistic and unnecessary. Labor unions also worried that it would weaken their own bargaining power, says Palmer, as they were otherwise responsible for getting their members social services.

But the root of the current system, Palmer says, can be found in World War II. In 1943 president Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed an effective freeze on labor wages, and companies started offering health and pension benefits as a way to retain workers instead. This was the beginning of employer-sponsored healthcare, though there was no government mandate to offer it (except in Hawaii). Unions began negotiating the benefits as part of what they could obtain for workers. The rest of the population wasn’t covered, but it meant the unions didn’t put pressure on the government to create a public health system.

Campaigns, Inc.

Another turning point, Palmer says, was an exceptionally successful campaign by Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, the founders of Campaigns, Inc.—”the first political consulting firm in the history of the world,” as The New Yorker’s Jill Lepore described it (paywall). On behalf of the California Medical Association, the two opposed California governor Earl Warren’s 1944 plan to introduce compulsory health insurance in the state, paid for through Social Security. Lepore explains that their slogan, “political medicine is bad medicine,” was used to lobby newspapers (with which they had advertising relations) and the population against government intervention in matters of health. They reminded people that what they called “socialized medicine” was a German invention—it came from the same country American soldiers were fighting abroad.

According to Lepore, after successfully halting the reform in California, Campaigns, Inc.used a similar strategy—this time on behalf of the American Medical Association—to block president Truman’s 1949 proposal of a public health plan. Their campaign, which included riding anti-communist sentiment to terrorize people against the specter of “socialized medicine” and “convincing the people […] of the superior advantages of private medicine, as practiced in America, over the State-dominated medical systems of other countries” successfully turned popular support against Truman’s plan.

This rejection of universal health coverage as a form of “collectivization” or “bolshevization,” says Theodore Brown, professor of public health and policy at the University of Rochester, had begun several decades before. In the 1910s, right-wing politicians, medical professionals, and representatives of the medical industry opposed attempts to broaden national health coverage on the grounds that it was a Soviet-inspired concept—an objection that gained force after the Russian revolution.

That sentiment, Brown believes, is still alive. Despite knowing well that a single-payer healthcare system is the only sustainable long-term solution for creating broader coverage without skyrocketing prices, he says, even advocates of single-payer like Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman consider it (paywall) politically unfeasible.

The result is that American doctors and the medical industry benefit from a system that pays them significantly more than doctors elsewhere—although, taking into account the cost of medical studies in the US, their standard of living isn’t necessarily that much higher.

Contrast this with Britain, which in 1948, as the country was patching itself up from World War II, introduced the National Health Service (NHS). The reform wasproposed during the war, and was based on the principle that health care for salaried workers and their dependents needed to be provided by the state, as it wasn’t coming from businesses. This request, led by the Labour party, found an ally in the UK’s need to guarantee the survival of a number of voluntary hospitals that had been opened during the war and risked failing without government support.

No labor, no party

Throughout, however, “if there is one overarching explanation” for why the US doesn’t have universal health care, “it is that there hasn’t been a labor party in the US that represents the working class,” Himmelstein says. Palmer agrees: “It is the core value of the labor party to bring social solidarity.”

The Democratic party has ties with unions and includes those who believe in European-style welfare policies. But it always had a strong pro-business soul which prevented it from focusing primarily on the needs of the working class. One reason no true labor party has emerged is that no large portion of US society considers itself “working class.” As Bruce Vladeck, a researcher with Mount Sinai Medical Center, noted in a 2003 paper in the American Journal of Public Health, “in the United States, everyone selfidentifies as middle class.” Therefore, the labor movement isn’t large enough to demand welfare reforms such as universal health coverage.

Further, Brown says, the labor movement is fragmented, containing a range of views on both healthcare and on other issues. The wide-scale demonization of socialist ideas took place within the labor movement, too, which progressively moved toward the center.

Even in the progressive eras of presidents Kennedy and Carter, while there were some attempts to pass universal health care, none was successful. They were blocked by the American middle class’s association of public programs with charity, as well the by-then powerful insurance and medical lobbies dedicated to opposing not-for-profit care.

Inequality and segregation have also played a role. The lack of universal health-care coverage tends to be hardest on racial minorities who, being more likely to be poor, are more likely to be on welfare. The Atlantic’s Vann Newkirk notes that the the battle for black civil rights and access to health care have historically been close; the introduction in 1965 of Medicare and Medicaid (government insurance for the poor and the elderly, respectively) struck a powerful blow against segregation, since it channeled federal funds to hospitals and thus, under the Civil Rights Act passed a year earlier, banned them from discriminating on the grounds of race.

However, African Americans are still the most likely to be uninsured. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of 2015, 12% of the black population and 17% of Hispanics were uninsured, compared to 8% of whites.

Paying more for less

Despite the evidence that a single-payer system would be a more efficient and cheaper choice, introducing it in the US is not a serious option. Trying to dismantle the current system would be a mammoth task. For one thing, it would cost a great many jobs: Health- and life-insurance companies employ some 800,000 people, with yet more employed by the medical industry just to deal with insurance companies. Though the savings from eliminating them could be invested in retraining those people for other professions, it would be difficult for any party to convince voters that it’s a necessary step.

And with a market worth more than $3 trillion, drug firms, medical providers, and health technology companies have an incentive to maintain a system that lets them set prices instead of negotiating with a single government payer. Both the GOP and the Democratic party are under the influence of the medical-industrial complex: In 2016, hospitals and nursing homes contributed over $95 million to electoral campaigns in the US, and the pharmaceutical sector gave nearly $250 million.

What about Bernie though

The popularity of Bernie Sanders and his single-payer health care model during the 2016 Democratic primaries, however, is a signal that more Americans are open to the idea. Certainly more than in 1993, when Hillary Clinton, then first lady, was heavily criticized for her attempt to push a universal coverage plan.

Gallup’s polls suggest that after a few years of skepticism Americans are again warming up to the ideathat health care should be a government responsibility. But the power of anti-socialist rhetoric is such that people’s views vary a great deal depending on how the question is asked, Palmer points out. When asked (in April 2017) by YouGovwhether they’d want to expand “Medicare for all” (pdf), 60% answered positively; when asked (in June 2017) about introducing “single-payer” health care (pdf), only 44% agreed.

The two questions are “essentially the same from a policy perspective,” commented Don McCanne, senior fellow at Physicians for a National Health Program. “But the layman hears the first question as being the expansion of Medicare to cover everyone… whereas the second question is about single payer, government, and taxes.”

The Republicans’ failure to pass their health-care law seems to confirm a prediction made early in the Trump administration: that once people had had a taste of increased health-care security with Obamacare, they wouldn’t easily forget it. “One of the unintended consequences of [the Republican reform],”says Palmer, “is that people are feeling more threatened.” But universal care? That’s still a big leap. - Quartz

North Korea conducts public executions for theft, watching South Korea media: report

North Korea carries out public executions on river banks and at school grounds and marketplaces for charges such as stealing copper from factory machines, distributing media from South Korea and prostitution, a report issued on Wednesday said.

The report, by a Seoul-based non-government group, said the often extra-judicial decisions for public executions are frequently influenced by "bad" family background or a government campaign to discourage certain behavior.
The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) said its report was based on interviews with 375 North Korean defectors from the isolated state over a period of two years.

Reuters could not independently verify the testimony of defectors in the report. The TJWG is made up of human rights activists and researchers and is led by Lee Younghwan, who has worked as an advocate for human rights in North Korea.

It receives most of its funding from the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn is funded by the U.S. Congress.
The TJWG report aims to document the locations of public killings and mass burials, which it says had not been done previously, to support an international push to hold to account those who commit what it describes as crimes against humanity.

"The maps and the accompanying testimonies create a picture of the scale of the abuses that have taken place over decades," the group said.
North Korea rejects charges of human rights abuses, saying its citizens enjoy protection under the constitution and accuses the United States of being the world's worst rights violator.
However, the North has faced an unprecedented push to hold the regime and its leader, Kim Jong Un, accountable for a wide range of rights abuses since a landmark 2014 report by a United Nations commission.

U.N. member countries urged the Security Council in 2014 to consider referring North Korea and its leader to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, as alleged in a Commission of Inquiry report.
The commission detailed abuses including large prison camps, systematic torture, starvation and executions comparable to Nazi-era atrocities, and linked the activities to the North's leadership.
North Korea has rejected that inquiry's findings and the push to bring the North to a tribunal remains stalled due in part to objections by China and Russia, which hold veto powers at the U.N. Security Council.

TJWG said its project to map the locations of mass graves and executions has the potential to contribute to documentation that could back the push for accountability and future efforts to bring the North to justice.
It said executions are carried out in prison camps to incite fear and intimidation among potential escapees, and public executions are carried out for seemingly minor crimes, including the theft of farm produce such as corn and rice.

Stealing electric cables and other commodities from factories to sell them and distribution of South Korean-produced media are also subject to executions, which are most commonly administered by shooting, it said.
Testimonies also showed people can be beaten to death, with one interviewee saying: "Some crimes were considered not worth wasting bullets on."
Government officials were executed on corruption and espionage charges, and bureaucrats from other regions would be made to watch "as a deterrence tactic", the report said.

Defectors from the North have previously testified to having witnessed public executions and rights abuses at detention facilities.

Aguero going nowhere as Guardiola cools Sanchez talk

Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola cooled speculation linking him with a move for Arsenal forward Alexis Sanchez and reiterated his stance that Sergio Aguero will not be allowed to leave the Premier League club.

Sanchez has been a purported target for City and Guardiola, who took the Chile star to Barcelona in 2011, throughout the close season.
The 28-year-old told reporters in his homeland over the weekend of his desire to play in the Champions League – a competition that will feature City but not Arsenal next term – but Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger maintained this week that Sanchez would not be allowed to leave despite entering the final year of his contract.

Speaking ahead of City's International Champions Cup meeting with rivals Manchester United in Houston, Guardiola was in no mood to challenge the veteran Frenchman and suggested attacking reinforcements were not a priority with Aguero and Gabriel Jesus on the books at the Etihad Stadium.
"Alexis plays for Arsenal, so Arsene said that [Sanchez will stay]. He knows more than me," the Catalan said.

"We have two really good strikers in Sergio and Gabriel so, in those terms, we are good. It’s not about a striker.
"The problem was, last season, Gabriel was out for a long time and we would like to see both of them together."

Pressed on whether Aguero, who was reported to have attracted interest from Premier League champions Chelsea this week, remained central to his plans, Guardiola was unequivocal.
"You know my opinion about Sergio," he said. "I said many times last season and I have not changed a word of what I said.

"He is our player and he will remain here."
Sanchez's international colleague Claudio Bravo appeared to face a less certain future following an error-strewn debut campaign in Manchester.
He was the penalty shoot-out hero in his country's Confederations Cup semi-final triumph over Portugal last month but is set to begin the season as second choice behind new recruit Ederson at City.

Nevertheless, Guardiola is keen for the 34-year-old former Barcelona man to compete with Ederson and dismissed suggestions City were in the market for experienced Napoli keeper Pepe Reina.

"No, no – we will go with Ederson, Claudio and the young players [goalkeepers]," Guardiola added. - Goal

 

He'd still be running now if we didn't take him off! - Klopp impressed by Salah energy

 Jurgen Klopp hailed Mohamed Salah's energy in a 2-0 Premier League Asia Trophy victory over Crystal Palace on Wednesday.

Salah, who arrived from Roma for an initial fee of €42million last month, played 50 minutes of the match in Hong Kong, where fellow new signing Dominic Solanke and Divock Origi scored the goals.
And Klopp was delighted to see the Egypt international giving an early indication of his talents as Liverpool step up their pre-season preparations.

"He would still be running if we didn't get him off the pitch," Klopp said of Salah, who was replaced by Ryan Kent five minutes into the second half.
"It was good. It's nice for everybody to see him on the pitch with his speed, but not only with his speed, with his football skills.
"I don't like to talk too much about a single player. I understand that you ask about it completely, but we played very well as a team today and Mo is a quick player.

"Dom is another good player but there are others around that made us really happy.
"You cannot win against Crystal Palace even in a pre-season game if you're not playing a good game. And we did this, so it's fine."
Solanke arrived from Chelsea on a free transfer after failing to break into the first team at Stamford Bridge, and Klopp hopes England's Under-20 World Cup star can fulfil his potential on Merseyside.


"I think it’s a smart move for him and for us," added Klopp. "He saw an opportunity at Liverpool and we see it also.
"Having him around, you could see immediately he is a smart player and a really skilled boy. I’m really happy about this.

Advertisement

"We will help him all we can and hopefully at the end everything will be good."

Morata ready to be Chelsea's main man? Spain star compared to Costa and Lukaku

Alvaro Morata is set to spearhead Chelsea's title defence after the Premier League champions reached an agreement to bring in the Spain striker from Real Madrid in a reported £70million deal.

But the circumstances surrounding Morata's arrival mean he will inevitably be measured against the deeds of two other master marksmen.
Diego Costa was Chelsea's top scorer en route to glory last season but Conte has decided Morata's combustible international colleague is more trouble than he is worth, freezing him out of his plans this time around.

The Blues were seemingly keen on bringing Romelu Lukaku back to Stamford Bridge but Manchester United beat them to the punch, wrapping up an initial £75m deal.
Missing out on the Belgium star reportedly left Conte furious, but he now has the chance to finally work with Morata – a player he agreed to sign for Juventus in 2014 before leaving to take charge of Italy.
Will it be a match made in heaven or a signing that leaves Chelsea fans wondering what might have been? With the help of Opta data, we will assess how Morata stacks up alongside Costa and Lukaku.

FROM SUPPORTING CAST TO LEADING MAN
Morata has operated with distinction at both Madrid and Juventus, but the biggest question mark surrounding the 24-year-old before his move to Chelsea is how he would cope with being the main striker at a major European club.
At Juventus he had Mario Mandzukic and Paulo Dybala for company, while Karim Benzema was arguably kept above him in the pecking order at the Santiago Bernabeu last season on the grounds of reputation rather than form.

But there is no doubt over the identity of Chelsea's number one striker now and Morata will have to adjust to an increased workload.
Over the past three seasons, Morata made 89 top-flight appearances, the same number as Costa. However, only 41 of those were starts, set against 86 for his older Spain team-mate. Lukaku started 104 of 110 matches for Everton.

Lukaku has more than double the amount of on-field minutes (9,316) than Morata (4,103) over the same period, with Costa clocking 7,550 minutes.

GOALS, GOALS, GOALS
As such, Morata's goalscoring return of 30 in three seasons across Serie A and LaLiga comes in below Lukaku's and Costa's in the Premier League – 53 and 52 respectively.
Morata also had far fewer shots (154), with Lukaku (333) comfortably outstripping Costa on this metric (255).

The younger Spain star shows a greater aptitude when it comes to creating goals for team-mates, however. Despite significantly less playing time, he matches Costa's 16 assists over the period in question – a total only one shy of Lukaku's.
Morata's assists arrive every 256.4 minutes, compared to 471.8 for Costa and 548 – or a shade over one every six 90-minute appearances -  for Lukaku.

SHARP SHOOTING ALVARO
Despite, or perhaps because of, his more limited playing opportunities, Morata has developed an impressive ruthless streak in front of goal.
He found the net once every 136.7 minutes over the past three seasons, with Costa on 145.2 minutes and Lukaku 175.7.

Costa and Morata's shot conversation rates are narrowly either side of 20 per cent, with the former coming out fractionally on top, while Lukaku is down on 15.9 per cent.

In LaLiga last season, Morata's goalscoring tools were particularly sharp. His 15 goals from 55 shots gave him the highest conversion rate (27.3 per cent) of any player to score more than 10 goals.
He averaged a goal every 88.7 minutes. That made him more efficient than both Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Suarez, with only a certain Lionel Messi boasting a better minutes-per-goal return of 76.5. - Goal

Walker: £50m fee no problem

Kyle Walker has told Sky Sports  News he does not feel the burden of the record fee which took him to Manchester City.

City paid Tottenham more than £50m for the England right-back last week, making him football's most expensive defender.
But Walker says his new status will not affect a single-minded pursuit of trophies at the Etihad.
He said: "It's out of my hands. Whatever the two clubs decided to pay, that's nothing to do with me.
"I've just got to concentrate on what got me here - keep playing the football I was playing at Tottenham, keep wanting to learn, keep being enthusiastic and showing the desire on the field to go and win trophies, which is what I've come here for."

Walker is set for an early reunion with his old team-mates on July 29, when City face Spurs in a pre-season friendly in Nashville.
"It's typical," he said. "When I went to Aston Villa on loan from Tottenham my first game was against [first club] Sheffield United. Football's a strange game and you never know what's around the corner.

"It'll be good to see them. It's good that we're playing in a neutral ground where it takes a little bit of the spice off it, then come the season it's business-time and I'm just trying to get the three points."