Everyone is pissed about Chucky. Are they right to be?

The reaction to Chucky Lozano has been close to unanimous and none of it is positive. Chicago got Lewandowski. Orlando got Griezmann. Clubs with a fraction of this one's history are signing players you'd stop what you were doing to watch, and we've taken a 31-year-old on loan from San Diego who hasn't played a competitive match all year. People wanted world class. This isn't that.

The rest of it stands up too. He has spent the season on the bench on $9.33 million of guaranteed compensation, fourth-highest in the league, which raises a question about rather more than fitness. What does it say about him that San Diego would rather pay him to do nothing than pick him? What does it say about us that we're the club taking him off their hands? We're relieving a chunk of the wage bill for a side we're in a playoff race with, and opening a Designated Player slot for them while we're at it.

Fine. All of that is true and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But it's also the entire conversation, and it has been for days, and nobody has got round to the only question that will matter in November: what does this player actually do?

Lozano turned 31 a week ago. Behind him are 478 senior appearances and 135 goals. He came out of Pachuca, won a Liga MX title there and finished top scorer in the CONCACAF Champions League with eight. He scored 34 league goals in two seasons at PSV and won the Eredivisie. Napoli then paid over €40 million for him, a club record at the time, and across four years he took a Coppa Italia and became the first Mexican to win Serie A. He went back to PSV, won two more titles, and San Diego paid €12 million for him last January, still one of the five largest fees this league has ever paid.

There are 75 caps and 18 goals for Mexico in there as well, including the one against Germany in 2018 that set off seismometers in Mexico City.

It isn't a Lewandowski CV. There are also maybe two or three players in this league with a better one.

He is an inverted left winger. He takes the ball near the touchline, isolates the full-back, and uses a short burst of acceleration to cut inside onto his right foot, either to shoot from the top of the box or slide someone through the half-space. Move him to the right and the game changes. He holds the width, goes on the outside, and puts low balls back across the six-yard box.

The part people forget is that he learned to defend, and he learned it the hard way. Gattuso threw him out of a training session at Napoli for not pressing hard enough, and by the time Spalletti had the job Lozano was being used as one of the triggers. Fifty-four per cent of his career goals have come in the second half, which is roughly what you'd expect from someone who keeps running while everyone else's shape stretches.

He has taken eleven penalties in his career and scored ten of them.

Last year he played 29 matches for San Diego, started 22, and finished with eleven goals and nine assists in 1,967 minutes. Per ninety that comes out at 0.92 goal contributions, 3.16 shots and 4.16 dribbles attempted at a 49% success rate.

The number I'd point at, though, is his conversion. He scored on 15.9% of his shots. When I went through this league's wingers a few days ago that group was converting at 21%, so Lozano wasn't finishing hot. He got to eleven goals by shooting a lot and putting away a fairly ordinary share, which is the version of a goalscoring season that happens again.

Now set him beside the player we lost, because they are closer than anyone seems to have noticed.

Gabriel Pec

LA Galaxy, 2026

1,226 mins

Hirving Lozano

San Diego, 2025

1,967 mins

Shots per 90 mins

2.86vs3.16

Dribbles attempted per 90 mins

4.11vs4.16

Dribbles completed

46%vs49%

Goals + assists per 90 mins

0.66vs0.92

Shots that became goals

12.8%vs15.9%

That comparison matters more than it looks, because Pec leaving is what broke our attack. The 1.53 expected goals a match we were averaging was built with him in the side. The three games after he left produced 1.28, 0.98 and 1.00.

Paintsil has started on the right in nine of his fourteen starts this season, with Pec on the left in thirteen of his fourteen. They didn't rotate between matches. Each held his side, although they'd swap often enough during them.

So there's a vacancy, it's on the left, and it is Lozano-shaped. Since Pec went, Sanabria has mostly been the one filling it: five starts in that position, 0.96 shots per ninety, the lowest attacking output of anyone in this squad. The slot that produced our second-highest shot volume is currently producing almost nothing.

The more interesting question is what it does to Paintsil. He attempts 4.07 dribbles a game, nearly as many as Pec did, and completes 35% of them, the worst rate of anyone here who tries it in any volume. That's a lot of taking people on for a player whose game isn't really taking people on. His game is running in behind. Give him a left winger who occupies a full-back and drags a centre-back across, and he stops having to beat four defenders a night to get anything done.

One complication, and it's a real one. Paintsil looks more dangerous on the left, cutting in. So does Lozano. If they both want that flank it's a conversation that will get had in-game rather than on a team sheet, which is roughly how he and Pec handled it anyway.

We're twelfth in the West on 22 points from nineteen, and that's a worse position than the two-point gap to the playoff line makes it sound. The side sitting ninth has 24 points from seventeen. Colorado, Houston and Real Salt Lake all have games in hand on us. We're running at 1.16 points a match against the cutoff's 1.41, and if everyone simply carries on as they are, the season finishes 39 against 48.

Fifteen matches left, fewer than anyone we're chasing. This is not a gap you close by maintaining your level. You have to be considerably better than you have been for nineteen matches.

So: if Lozano plays 70% of the minutes left at last season's rate, that's around ten goal contributions. Half-fit and eased in at half the minutes, it's still about seven. We're scoring 1.26 goals a game. Whatever else it is, that's not a marketing exercise. It's a material change to the arithmetic.

Nothing above says anything about whether he can run. He hasn't played a competitive match since last November, and there is no way to measure eight months of not playing. That is the actual risk in this deal, and it's a good deal larger than his age or his salary.

I also can't tell you why he wasn't picked. Nobody outside that building can. It might be fitness, it might be a falling-out, it might be that Mikey Varas found a shape he preferred. The difference between those matters enormously, but it's reporting, and I haven't got it.

Everything the reaction says is true. He isn't Lewandowski, he hasn't kicked a ball this year, and the questions about why are fair ones.

But it's a loan. It's a one-way door. If it doesn't work we hand him back in November having spent part of a season on a player who, the last time anyone picked him, was one of the better attacking wingers in this league, and who happens to be almost exactly the profile we lost in July.

The concerns are valid. They're also massively overblown. Based on the reaction you'd think this was pure insanity, and objectively I just don't see how you get there.