If we don't get a striker in to replace lukaku, I like to think of the whole 'debacle' in the form of an extended metaphor.
You're seeing a bird who's boss, bit of a tit but too fit for you at probably 8.5/10 to your 6.8. she tells you in six months time she's going travelling alone and you can't really blame her, you'd do that too if you could be assed/had your life in order.
She doesn't explicitly say it, but you infer from her telling you this that she is essentially splitting up with you to go and bang 'lads' on their gap year who have names like Hugh and Orlando (no offence to those that use those names). Like the lads in Alex Garland's novel The Beach who offer the narrator wacky backy and get shot by the Thai police.
But as she doesn't tell you she wants to split up with you right away, you do what any other red blooded male would do and keep tapping the gloriousness out of the last dregs of the relationship until the moment of doom arrives. And it's glorious, except for the creeping doubt.
Now you know that during this time you should bite the bullet, split up with her and look for new birds. But through a combination of paralyzing fear at the thought of not being able to replace her and also the false confidence that poking the pink pit provides, you sort of passive aggressively stay with her whilst looking part time for others, you're not better than her, you should have started looking earlier/not been so bloody pleased with yourself.
This is when you start to realise that, despite your legendary sense of humour and extremely gradually improving sexual prowess, you're actually punching above your weight, as when you try to snare a lady at the same level as your current bird, they don't look at you in the same way, and the only birds who are catching your eye are either bad munters or are nice but are either like way taller than you or have bizarre traits like a weird laugh or are much older than you or used to go out with your best mate or have about seventy kids or something like that. They're just not quite suitable.
After she leaves, the part time search becomes full time, but during the summer period it seems every other lad is also out on the pull, and as the competition grows, the birds are gradually choosing their optimal nests, and so the the above scenario of the previous paragraph - those available potential suitors being unsuitable, but also, the attractive options being unmoved by your efforts or captured by other desperate creatures - persists until you're left being rejected by 5/10s that laugh at you as they reject you so all you are left with is having a crywank into a sock over a split second memory of your ex every day until Christmas.
Eventually you realise that you have to try to pull a different type of bird and start playing a different game and this might be the only way you find the next Miss Right, i.e., by not trying to replace the previous one.
My apologies if you actually read that.
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