Romelu Lukaku

[LAM09 6,783]

5 hours ago, bigbluewillie said:

You and ppl need to give him time as a player, it might be a long time before he fits in, me i'm prepared to wait til that time, he has my support

And he needs to play regularly he aint get get any better sitting on the bench.

I get where you're coming from & I'm all for supporting players whilst they're at the club, but he should have until the end of the season IMO. 

Too many players seem to get a free ride for far too long regardless of their actual output on the field, to the team's detriment. Also, you have to take into consideration that the biggest hurdle for most signings is adjusting to a new league, which doesn't apply at all where he's concerned, seeing as he's play most of his senior football in England (as @MoroccanBlue mentioned).

Edited December 22, 2021 by LAM09

[Stats 7,059]

Fantastic. Come on, give the man credit where it is due. He changed the game for us and kept us in title race today.

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, Stats said:

Fantastic. Come on, give the man credit where it is due. He changed the game for us and kept us in title race today.

Score winners against Liverpool and City and we'll talk. 👀

[MoroccanBlue 5,320]

Credit where it's due. Changed the game. It the type of opposition that we really need to be utilising him against. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,923]

Draws players in,  makes others panic, nightmare for defenders. Great play.

[Stats 7,059]

47 minutes ago, Jase said:

Score winners against Liverpool and City and we'll talk. 👀

Well this season, I thought he done decent against Liverpool before James got sent off. Of course it will be difficult for him.

Against City we were so defensive and albeit he was poor, the approach was so defensive. So maybe we need to go with a more offensive approach.

That being said, game by game, today he completely changed the game for us.  He has been getting slack by most of fan base and today he stepped up.

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Stats

[Jase 43,479]

53 minutes ago, Stats said:

Well this season, I thought he done decent against Liverpool before James got sent off. Of course it will be difficult for him.

Against City we were so defensive and albeit he was poor, the approach was so defensive. So maybe we need to go with a more offensive approach.

That being said, game by game, today he completely changed the game for us.  He has been getting slack by most of fan base and today he stepped up.

He did make the difference in the second half but he was also unconvincing and even completely made us worse in some previous games (e.g. second half at West Ham). On top of that, we spent almost 100 million on him and some people have even said he is a complete striker these days and all that. So please, don't feel surprised if not everyone is jumping up and down over him after one game. Do it consistently, do it in the big games, gel with the others, then we'll see. 

[DoubleO 192]

I personally don’t understand why many fans have been criticizing him so much. Yes , there were some poor games before he got injured, but still he was scoring all over the place both for Chelsea and Belgium. It was such a bad luck the injury happened right before the period where we were facing norwiches, newcastles etc. Had he been playing then, the goal tally would look much better. Just wait for the spring when he gets fit and restores that goal scoring routine. He’s an excellent player with some invaluable capabalities

[Jase 43,479]

@Tomo you were right.

[Tomo 21,733]

13 minutes ago, Jase said:

@Tomo you were right.

?

[Jase 43,479]

1 minute ago, Tomo said:

?

About how people would react when Lukaku scores while disregarding the bigger concern. 

[Tomo 21,733]

6 minutes ago, Jase said:

About how people would react when Lukaku scores while disregarding the bigger concern. 

Oh

In fairness he was fantastic today and was even making visible attempts to adapt to the system.

I still need a lot more sample size before I even think about reassessing my opinion in the grand scheme of things but I'll let him have his moment today.

[Jase 43,479]

6 minutes ago, Tomo said:

Oh

In fairness he was fantastic today and was even making visible attempts to adapt to the system.

I still need a lot more sample size before I even think about reassessing my opinion in the grand scheme of things but I'll let him have his moment today.

Yeah, fair but you were still right. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,923]

2 hours ago, Stats said:

Well this season, I thought he done decent against Liverpool before James got sent off. Of course it will be difficult for him.

Against City we were so defensive and albeit he was poor, the approach was so defensive. So maybe we need to go with a more offensive approach.

That being said, game by game, today he completely changed the game for us.  He has been getting slack by most of fan base and today he stepped up.

 

Had a really good attitude in his post match -'going to treat every game from now on as a cup final'

[LAM09 6,783]

The passage of play prior to winning our second PK was something that enabled him/Inter to do so well last season. Someone mentioned it previously, but our reluctancy to move the ball quickly in attack hampers his play/output drastically.  

[Jase 43,479]

5 minutes ago, LAM09 said:

The passage of play prior to winning our second PK was something that enabled him/Inter to do so well last season. Someone mentioned it previously, but our reluctancy to move the ball quickly in attack hampers his play/output drastically.  

But isn't there a caveat to how that goal came about? I mean, Villa were pushing for the equalizer and were always gonna leave spaces for us to exploit. Unless we suddenly start to play on the counter, Lukaku isn't going to get that kind of room to operate (pretty much like what Conte made Inter do) in general situations. Otherwise, agree with the notion that we tend to be slow in releasing the ball quickly. Werner and our other speedy players would also have more joy if we do it more often. 

[OneMoSalah 8,785]

4 hours ago, Jase said:

But isn't there a caveat to how that goal came about? I mean, Villa were pushing for the equalizer and were always gonna leave spaces for us to exploit. Unless we suddenly start to play on the counter, Lukaku isn't going to get that kind of room to operate (pretty much like what Conte made Inter do) in general situations. Otherwise, agree with the notion that we tend to be slow in releasing the ball quickly. Werner and our other speedy players would also have more joy if we do it more often. 

Aye but also wasn’t a huge part of our success last season, particularly in the bigger games (City, Madrid, Liverpool etc) not orientated more around playing counter attacking or counter pressing football and exposing/isolating teams in certain areas?

And thats without even mentioning personnel? 

But not releasing the ball quick enough is a problem for a lot of our attackers - 100% agree - and I do think its fair to say that we still don’t know our best/most effective front 3. We seen the guys last year worked well but they weren’t ruthless and we’ve seen so many combination’s this season. I still cant shake the feeling TT is very annoyed with the performances and output from the majority of the attacking guys bar Mount.

Injuries and COVID doesn’t help but again, if we had all our players TT would still vary the front 3 every few games like he seems to have done this season. 

[Jase 43,479]

2 minutes ago, OneMoSalah said:

Aye but also wasn’t a huge part of our success last season, particularly in the bigger games (City, Madrid, Liverpool etc) not orientated more around playing counter attacking or counter pressing football and exposing/isolating teams in certain areas?

Yes but a situational circumstance is different from an entire plan for a game altogether. It's not necessarily his fault but the results (don't necessarily mean only the score) with him in a counter-attacking setup in the few games for us has been mixed so far.