Romelu Lukaku

[chelsea_4_eva 1,159]

PSG would be a great fit for Lukaku tbh

[robsblubot 3,504]

1 hour ago, chelsea_4_eva said:

PSG would be a great fit for Lukaku tbh

I disagree. As one who finds Lukaku's virtues and weaknesses fairly evident, I think teams which will press high and mostly have the ball aren't a good fit for him. That's why he did well at Everton and then In Italy: he needs space to roam

 

[Vesper 28,832]

What happens next for Romelu Lukaku?

https://theathletic.com/3247522/2022/04/17/what-happens-next-for-romelu-lukaku/

As Real Madrid president Florentino Perez left Stamford Bridge in triumph last week, the reporter intercepting him got a short and sweet answer about what the Super League die-hard had just witnessed. “El mejor,” Perez glowed with pride. “El mejor delantero del mundo.” The best striker in the world.

After his seismic hat-trick against Paris Saint-Germain in March, Karim Benzema had told L’Equipe. “I think if I had tried to score again, I could have scored one or two more goals. When I look back at how I scored the third one, I’m so relaxed, I think I was in a moment where everything I was trying to do was going to go in. It’s rare, but sometimes it happens in a match to feel like that. I think that in the last 20 minutes I could have done what I wanted.”

Benzema left the same impression against Chelsea. He perhaps could have had four but instead had to settle for back-to-back Champions League hat-tricks. The 34-year-old is in a state of grace at the moment and early shouts for him to win the next edition of the Ballon d’Or are growing louder.

The contrast with Romelu Lukaku could not be starker. Chelsea’s club-record acquisition, the most expensive signing of the summer transfer window after Jack Grealish, started the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final on the bench. It was the kind of game he was bought to decide. Alas, Thomas Tuchel once again preferred Kai Havertz, whose goal against Manchester City in Porto last May made Chelsea European champions for the second time in their history. Havertz got Chelsea back into the first leg against Madrid, salvaging what Tuchel called “one of the worst first halves” he’d seen from his side during his time in charge. But Benzema then re-opened Madrid’s two-goal cushion, pouncing on a mistake by Edouard Mendy at the beginning of the second half just as the wily old fox had done to Gigio Donnarumma against PSG in the last 16 and Loris Karius in the 2018 Champions League final against Liverpool.

Watching in the stands was former Chelsea manager Antonio Conte, fresh from winning Italy’s Coach of the Year award, the Panchina d’Oro, for a fourth time out of recognition of the job he had done at Inter Milan in ending their 11-year wait for a Scudetto. Conte recently revealed he lives by a piece of advice from Pantaleo Corvino, the sporting director from his hometown on Italy’s heel, Lecce. “He says you can make a mistake about your wife but not about the strikers and the goalkeepers.” Conte wanted Lukaku at Chelsea in 2017 and insisted Inter sign him in 2019. It was not a mistake. How could Chelsea signing him this summer be a mistake?

Behind Conte at the Bridge was a member of Lukaku’s entourage who had driven him around Milan as the blue and black side of the city turned out en masse to celebrate Inter finally knocking Juventus off their perch. Next to him was Thierry Henry, with whom Lukaku has struck up a close bond over the time they’ve spent working together at international level. Lukaku and Henry speak regularly. “We’re addicted to football,” Lukaku told France Football last year. “We can talk for ages about a game in the Bundesliga between Augsburg and I don’t know who.”

It must have been odd then for Conte and Henry to attend a game of that magnitude and see a player they rate so highly only figure as a €115 million option off the bench. Once the King of Milan, Lukaku continues to look lost on the King’s Road. When Tuchel turned to him in the find half-hour, it was the final roll of the dice. He had already brought on Mateo Kovacic for Andreas Christensen and Hakim Ziyech for N’Golo Kante as Chelsea switched to 4-2-3-1. The headers Lukaku then glanced wide, particularly the one where Madrid’s defence was caught off-guard by a deflected Cesar Azpilicueta cross, suffered in comparison with the expertly-taken pair Benzema scored.

“In the second half we had 16 shots to one shot,” Tuchel observed. “You can always come back, you can equalise, you can win it but if you kill the game yourself after 48 minutes it is harder and harder of course. Still, we had chances in the second half to make it 3-2 which could be crucial but not today.” The manner of Chelsea’s performance — “far, far, far from our standards” — so upset Tuchel he didn’t sleep. He re-watched the game and between notes and eating chocolate in the kitchen pressed pause in disbelief at what he was seeing. The next morning Tuchel put himself through yet another viewing and became enraged all over again.

Ordinarily in these circumstances, a coach may consider a change in the line-up or tactical set-up as a way to buck the trend. The weekend’s game against Southampton could therefore have constituted an opportunity for Lukaku. But he didn’t make the squad, Chelsea won 6-0 and a troublesome achilles flare-up ruled him out of the flight to Madrid. To miss out altogether on Tuesday night at the Bernabeu can’t have been easy, as Chelsea promised to complete a comeback for the ages only to succumb in extra time to that man Benzema.

Afterwards, Tuchel said Chelsea could have “no regrets.” But on BT Sport, Joe Cole observed: “Real Madrid had Karim Benzema, a seasoned centre-forward, a No 9 that is just there. Chelsea had three No 10s playing there who are not quite as clinical. They have other attributes. But if you had a player… Lukaku was supposed to be that player. We talked about the jigsaw. Benzema puts those chances away for Chelsea and Chelsea go through to the semi-final.”

Memories of Lukaku bundling over Arsenal’s Pablo Mari in August to open the scoring on his ‘second’ Chelsea debut now feel as long ago as his first spell at the club. For a fleeting moment, it was considered a tipping point. Chelsea bought a striker. Man City didn’t. Chelsea beat City in the Champions League final. It felt like it might be Chelsea’s year in the Premier League. Tuchel even joked about expecting Lukaku to score “50, 60 (goals) before winter.” By New Year’s Eve, though, he had only five in the Premier League. It’s Lukaku’s worst record in England since his move to Chelsea as a teenager from Anderlecht. Things weren’t this bad even in his final season at Manchester United, an experience he compared to being in “a tunnel”. Conte and Inter were the light at the end of it. In Lukaku’s career, his star never shone brighter than it did in Italy. He is the reigning Serie A MVP and last month belatedly received Italy’s equivalent of the PFA Player of the Year award.

Lukaku's league record during his career

A year ago he agreed with France Football he should be in the conversation as one of the top five strikers in the world. “Over the last few months, top five, yes!” he said. “There may be players who have scored more goals but… No, no top five is good. I don’t want to give a ranking but I’m one of them.”

It was hardly a deluded boast either. Lukaku scored 34 goals in all competitions in his first season at Inter. It was the most prolific debut year in the club’s history, eclipsing even Ronaldo in 1997. He changed his diet and began to understand his body more. Inter set up a Wyscout account for him to study defenders. Conte taught him how to go into the red zone and made Lukaku work on his first touch and honed his play back-to-goal with the help of a ball machine and back-up centre-back Andrea Ranocchia.

Inter played to Lukaku’s strengths in a mid-to-low block with carefully choreographed combinations between him, his strike partner Lautaro Martinez and the wing-backs, which were designed to get Lukaku running at goal, scanning the pitch, at pace, the same way Erling Haaland does for Dortmund. It’s enough to look at what Conte is doing with Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski at the moment. Kane’s playmaking is at the fore more than ever under Conte. It was the same with Lukaku, who didn’t just finish last season with 24 league goals but 10 assists as well.

He joined Chelsea as a complete striker, never readier to dominate. The parallels he was supposed to draw were with Didier Drogba and Diego Costa. Instead, for now, he is being compared with Andriy Shevchenko, Fernando Torres, Alvaro Morata and Timo Werner. On social media, Lukaku’s woes have been attributed to the “Serie A tax” as if his numbers over the last couple of seasons were inflated by playing at a standard perceived to be lower than the Premier League. But Mohamed Salah boomed upon returning to England and Lukaku had already proven himself here with 112 goals in weaker teams than this Chelsea one.

The crux of the matter is less reductive and more complicated. Lukaku arrived on the eve of the season opener against Crystal Palace. The move didn’t get done early enough for him to spend the summer working out with Chelsea. He’d barely returned to pre-season with Inter after holidaying in the US and Turks & Caicos following Belgium’s elimination from the Euros. He has since claimed it wasn’t his intention to leave and only did when Inter, mired in financial difficulty, didn’t offer him an extension. The plan was to stay for another couple of years and then move to Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. But the opportunity to join Chelsea emerged and he had unfinished business, so why not go back?

The sudden turn of events, apparently conflicted and confused decision-making over his future, the poor reception of his departure from Inter’s ultras and the fact he joined Chelsea more or less without a pre-season was far from ideal, particularly given the weight of expectation surrounding his signing. Lukaku seemed to go through the same inner tumult as Conte, who revealed he turned down Tottenham in the summer because he was still too emotionally tied to Inter and had yet to process the circumstances that led him to break a special bond.

The ankle injury he sustained when Malmo’s Lasse Nielsen ploughed through the back of him in October, followed by COVID-19, also disrupted his efforts and Chelsea’s to sync him up with his new team-mates during an attritional schedule for the club which made it nigh on impossible to play the same XI every game. Conte’s Inter, by contrast, didn’t have to play the equivalent of a Carabao Cup or Club World Cup and this time last year, were playing one game a week, leaning, more or less, on the same group of guys.

Striking up the chemistry he had with Lautaro Martinez, either with Werner as a partner and a No 10 in behind, or with Lukaku as a lone striker and Havertz and Mount in support, has been fraught with difficulty in light of the need to rotate and the intermittent availability of some of Chelsea’s forward players. The precise fit with Chelsea, who play more or less the same system as Inter but a different style, has constantly come up too, mostly as Lukaku raised it himself in that infamous Sky Italia interview which was only released three weeks after the reporter was allowed into his London home, during which time Tuchel and Lukaku worked on the issue and thought they were on the same page.

The shock it caused and questions it raised about Lukaku’s commitment to Chelsea only intensified the scrutiny of his performances. He hasn’t scored in the Premier League since it aired on New Year’s Eve. The last time he started a game in the league was against Palace when he managed seven touches in 94 minutes, a record low in the Opta annals. “As a coach, when you go and get Romelu Lukaku, either you’re going to have to make him adapt to how you play or you change your way to suit him,” Thierry Henry mused on CBS. “I didn’t think that was going to happen and for Rom to adapt to how they play, it takes time. It is not an easy one.

“Now, is it normal that he had seven touches? No, that is also not normal regardless of if the coach likes you or not likes you. That shouldn’t happen but it did happen, so they need to move forward on that. It’s a tough one to read. They like to press. They like to be active and to change the front three and Rom likes to stay in the middle so it makes it very difficult for him to adapt to this situation. Again. Why did you go and get him?”

Is anyone else going to come and get him when his only starts for Chelsea these days are against Plymouth Argyle, Luton Town and Middlesbrough in the FA Cup? On the day of the first leg of Chelsea’s Champions League quarter-final, La Gazzetta dello Sport splashed Lukaku all over their front page, going so far as to claim he has made a series of exploratory calls to sound out his old club about the prospects of a return in the summer. But while Lukaku remains in touch with his former Inter team-mates, his focus is on turning things around at Chelsea and being decisive in the Premier League, not just the FA Cup and Club World Cup.

Before the release of the Sky Italia interview, Inter’s sporting director Pier Ausilio playfully entertained the idea of taking Lukaku back on loan. But the changed circumstances of the Italian champions shouldn’t be forgotten. Lukaku’s sale helped stabilise Inter’s finances last summer. Ultimately Conte walked away because the club was scaling back rather than kicking on. A replacement for Lukaku, Edin Dzeko, was sourced for next to no fee and while the Bosnia international isn’t getting any younger, The Athletic understands Inter’s primary target for the centre-forward position when the transfer window reopens is 23-year-old Gianluca Scamacca. The Sassuolo striker signed a new deal on Wednesday but Inter’s interest is clear. He would cost less and earn less than Lukaku, whose book value at Chelsea will still be an eye-watering €92 million in July.

Even were that to happen next season, come the end of it Lukaku would be 30 and still worth €69 million, a figure close to the club-record fee Inter paid for him before the pandemic impacted Suning’s business in China and the Nerazzurri were forced to go on a strict diet. Despite being buttressed by a loan from Oaktree Capital, this summer more sales are expected and while they are unlikely to be on the scale of nine months ago, the club is moving to a more sustainable model.

The ultras also snapped the olive branch Lukaku extended to them in the Sky Italia interview, the purpose of which was to give his version of events and show his love and appreciation for the club and its fanbase. A banner left outside San Siro scoffed: “Who runs away when it rains doesn’t matter to us, who stays in a storm does.” Lukaku was lumped together with other players who famously abandoned them like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who departed for Barcelona the summer before Inter won the treble only to end up on the margins of “Philosopher” Pep Guardiola’s era-defining team.

Ibrahimovic was the same age as Lukaku at the time and, as nice as it was to sit in the stands with Thierry Henry in Barcelona tracksuits, he had no desire to spend another year “contemplating the weather” at the Camp Nou and other stadiums up and down Spain. “What else could I do?” he wrote in his book. “For the first time, football didn’t seem important.” Ibrahimovic was gone after a year as Barcelona swallowed the cost, taking a huge hit when they sold the Swede to AC Milan.

When Sky Italia asked Lukaku if he would ever consider moving to one of Inter’s rivals he was unequivocal. “Mai,” he repeated. Never. Milan are far too disciplined to even consider Lukaku as an option while Juventus, who reached an agreement to swap him for Paulo Dybala with Manchester United in 2019, signed Dusan Vlahovic for €75 million in January. As for the clubs Lukaku considered in the past, Real Madrid’s priority is to partner Benzema with Kylian Mbappe, Barcelona are €1.35 billion in debt and Bayern are determined to tie down Robert Lewandowski to a new deal. PSG have the resources but haven’t yet given up hope on keeping Mbappe, plus sources indicate AC Milan’s Rafael Leao would figure high on their list of contingencies should their star striker move to the Bernabeu in a market set to be defined by the comings and goings of other strikers like Erling Haaland and Darwin Nunez, who Chelsea are monitoring too.

The dominos are about to fall. Whether one tumbles into Lukaku and causes him and another sidelined Belgian star, Eden Hazard, to move in a World Cup year remains to be seen. He isn’t the only headline signing from last summer to struggle as the cases of Grealish, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — who scored a hat-trick against Norwich City this weekend but is goalless in 13 of 16 appearances for club and country in 2022 — amply demonstrate.

To paraphrase the Inter ultras, the measure of Lukaku will be whether he rides out the storm engulfing his Chelsea career until the sun finally comes out. In a week when Werner hit the woodwork three times, got a brace against Southampton and scored in Madrid, no one needs reminding how quickly things change in football. “It was set out for (Timo) to deliver and make a statement that he has not given up, that he is still an important player for this club and this group,” Tuchel said.

The time has come for Lukaku to make a similar statement too.

[Johnnyeye 7,441]

stupid buy by the club again, waste of 100 millions, we never learn do we?

[Vesper 28,832]

2 hours ago, Johnnyeye said:

stupid buy by the club again, waste of 100 millions, we never learn do we?

£180m counting salary

[Tomo 21,733]

1 hour ago, Johnnyeye said:

stupid buy by the club again, waste of 100 millions, we never learn do we?

Ofcourse he's going to snatch at his chances when he doesn't get many due to lack service.

Way some of you are banging on you'd think we scored 9 goals in the 2 games he was out.

[Vesper 28,832]

16 minutes ago, Hermione said:

Since Roman got sanctioned Romulus hardly plays coincidence? Are we sure Tuchel wanted this clown.

I think he was a good company man, and after the board saw Håland was a no go, they asked Tuchel to convince Lukaku to come

football is, unfortunately the one major team sport where the manager/coach often has little power over player recruitment

almost no chance a basketball, hockey, baseball or yank football head coach/manager would have as little input as many football managers do

sure, there are exceptions (Fergie, Pep, Klopp etc) but in the modern game, the boards usually run the road, especially at Chels

 

[chelsea_4_eva 1,159]

This is the guy that thinks hes a world class level player but then has the touch of a brick wall. Talks the talk but never walks the walk. If he just got his head down and worked hard and not done that clusterfuck of an interview in the middle of the season, he would not get as much hate.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,892]

6 hours ago, chelsea_4_eva said:

This is the guy that thinks hes a world class level player but then has the touch of a brick wall. Talks the talk but never walks the walk. If he just got his head down and worked hard and not done that clusterfuck of an interview in the middle of the season, he would not get as much hate.

He would be a difference maker for PSG. For them he could be the missing piece of the jigsaw but at Chelsea he's a piece that wound up in the wrong box. He's a piece of the puzzle ok but just not the one Thomas Tuchel is trying to put together.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,892]

7 hours ago, Vesper said:

I think he [Tuchel] was a good company man, and after the board saw Håland was a no go, they asked Tuchel to convince Lukaku to come

Agreed.

[robsblubot 3,504]

I can't imagine him delivering the goods at any top CL club. Just look at his stats alone and Inter was the oddball. Now, Inter does not compete in CL and does not pin their opponents down in their half.

Again, not really sure what was so mysterious about his very specific and abundantly clear strengths and weaknesses.

Edited April 21, 2022 by robsblubot

[Vesper 28,832]

Chelsea legend Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink's scathing Romelu Lukaku criticism proved spot on

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/Chelsea-arsenal-hasselbaink-romelu-lukaku-26760893

 

It was another forgettable night at Stamford Bridge for Chelsea who went down 4-2 to London rivals Arsenal, consequently suffering their third straight home defeat. Although the loss will most likely prove ineffectual in terms of where Chelsea finishes this season, it was still a bitter pill for Blues fans to swallow.

Leading the inquiry immediately after the game was Chelsea legend Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink who was part of the Sky Sports punditry team. And he didn’t hold back in his criticism of not only Chelsea as a collective, but also key players within the side.

One of those singled out by Hasselbaink was Romelu Lukaku who had little to no impact in what was his first Premier League start in over two months. The 28-year-old was of course signed for a mammoth £97.5million last summer and expected to take Chelsea to a new level following a scintillating two years with Inter Milan in which he bagged 64 goals in 95 appearances.

But, so far, he’s managed just 12 goals across all competitions, with only seven of those strikes coming in either the Premier League or Champions League.

Those issues have not all been down to Lukaku alone, and Thomas Tuchel has alluded on more than one occasion that Chelsea must try to do more to "understand him better" as a player. Yet Lukaku isn’t blameless either, and the sympathy from Chelsea fans is starting to waver as his work ethic and commitment both continue to come into question.

“For Chelsea today it was a really bad performance. Certain players are getting an opportunity, Lukaku, (Malang) Sarr and (Andreas) Christensen,” said Hasselbaink. “He (Lukaku) doesn't do enough. If you want to be the man you've got to run around. You need to try and show that you're bothered. You need to want to suffer. He doesn't run around”.

The former Chelsea striker then went on to question the 28-year-old’s desire. “Lukaku, you've not had the best games show that you are the man and really want it. Go and show that desire I didn't see it. That desire, I didn't see it.”

These accusations carry some merit, particularly when it comes to Lukaku’s work rate without the ball. Strikingly, from the 127 Premier League forwards who have played over 600 league minutes this season, Lukaku ranks third-bottom in terms of the number of defensive pressures he’s made on a per 90 basis (8.54).

There could be a case made that the Belgian plays for a side that dominate the ball, and as a result, he’s bestowed fewer pressing opportunities.

However, within that same list of 127 players, Diogo Jota ranks inside the top ten, while Liverpool teammate Roberto Firmino ranks 14th - and Liverpool boasts a higher possession average than Chelsea this season. You also have Chelsea players like Christian Pulisic sitting as high as 24th.

Lukaku’s primary job is to score goals, and it’s fair to say that there are some factors influencing his ability to do so, like the structure of the team which does not play to his strengths.

Yet desire and commitment are two areas that he can control, and right now both are missing.

[Vesper 28,832]

31 minutes ago, Hermione said:

Expecting Romulus to start against United, he wants to prove something against his former team and I think he will, expect some world class finger pointing from him.

I would start Remus

[Tomo 21,733]

Today shown he could have actually been an asset if he knew his place and played a Giroud role (alternative tactical option when the match situation suited).

Had he stayed with us all along he could have probably had a good trophy laden career as a plan B but his big ego got in the way.

I guess he got what he wanted for the most part (unconditional starting spot) but apart from the Belgium League as a teenager and Serie A under a manager who's turned all sorts of average dross into a Champion he's got absolutely nothing to show for it.

[Johnnyeye 7,441]

just leave this club ffs

[dimmas 126]

Do you think dortmund might be interest to recruit lukaku to replace halland?

 

Doesn't mean lukaku would fill halland's boot, since halland seems really superior in certain important aspect

But if they try to find striker with huge physicality, can exploit acres of space, capable to score load of goals when use solely as poacher. Lukaku in dortmund might work actually

Edited April 30, 2022 by dimmas

[Blues Forever 1,232]

 

[Superblue 6,370]