Romelu Lukaku showing Chelsea what they're missing at Everton
Monday 7 December 2015 20:31, UK
As Jose Mourinho faces a striker conundrum at Chelsea, Everton’s Romelu Lukaku is enjoying a rich vein of form. Here, Nick Wright examines the Belgian’s rise since leaving Stamford Bridge and ponders what might have been for the Blues…
If Jose Mourinho tuned in to watch his old friend Aitor Karanka's Middlesbrough against Everton on Tuesday night, he was probably reaching for the remote after 28 minutes. It was then - after Gerard Deulofeu had opened the scoring at the Riverside Stadium - that his former striker Romelu Lukaku rose to head home his sixth goal in five games.
It was another reminder of what could have been for Chelsea had they not sanctioned his £28m departure last summer. The Belgian's 10th Premier League goal of the campaign at the weekend was rather lost in the drama of Jamie Vardy's record-breaking heroics and Diego Costa's bib-throwing petulance, but his efforts will not have gone unnoticed by Mourinho, who didn't even have a striker on the pitch as Chelsea failed to find a way past Tottenham on Sunday.
For Lukaku, a bigger landmark came a week previously, when his first goal in Everton's 4-0 thrashing of Aston Villa made him only the fifth player in Premier League history to score 50 goals before the age of 23. The rest of that esteemed list is made up of Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney. Lukaku is in good company.
Mourinho's loss has been Roberto Martinez's gain. "He is a striker who can do it all," said the Everton manager earlier this week. "He has the old fashioned traits - he can have his back to play, the strength, the power. But he can also run with the ball and is a clinical finisher."
Of course, Costa's 20-goal contribution to Chelsea's title triumph ensured complaints about Lukaku's departure did not linger for long last season. The club turned a £10m profit on the former Anderlecht prodigy and the fee helped balance the books after Costa's arrival, but Mourinho's short-termism is haunting them now.
Lukaku scored more Premier League goals in November than Costa, Radamel Falcao and Loic Remy have managed between them all season, and Kevin De Bruyne's stellar start at Manchester City is ramming the point home.
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Mourinho questioned Lukaku and De Bruyne's attitudes after they were sold, but is it that unusual for talented young players to be temperamental? Could Mourinho not have done more to ease their concerns and keep them at the club?
His ruthlessness is one of the attributes that has made him so successful, but Lukaku and De Bruyne are proof that it can also be detrimental, and his tough stance with young players has resurfaced this season with his public criticism of Eden Hazard and teenager Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Lukaku's case is special, because by the summer of 2014 he had already proved he was one of the Premier League's most effective strikers with 32 goals in 66 league appearances on loan at West Brom and Everton. And while his tally of 10 Premier League strikes in 2014/15 was lower than usual, his all-round improvement continued steadily and this year he is well on course for his most prolific campaign yet.
Having become the top scorer in Belgium and made his full international debut as a 16-year-old, it is easy to forget that Lukaku is still five months shy of his 23rd birthday. It makes his scoring feats all the more impressive and suggests he is not even close to his prime.
Lukaku has scored more Premier League goals than Ronaldo at the same age, and since the 2012/13 season only Luis Suarez and Sergio Aguero can better his total of 52. Indeed, when Martinez highlighted Lukaku's finishing ability earlier this week he had good reason. Lukaku's shooting accuracy of 67.74 per cent is the highest of any player to have had more than 20 shots this season, and his conversion rate of 32.26 per cent only falls fractionally short of Vardy's.
Lukaku is capable of scoring with his left foot, right foot and head, but he brings a lot more to the table than goals. And while his physicality and athleticism are formidable strengths, his stunning outside-of-the-boot assist for Arouna Kone against Sunderland was an example of his frequently overlooked technical ability.
Lukaku has more assists than any other Premier League striker this season with four, and that level of creativity is nothing new. Since the start of the 2012/13 season, Lukaku has set up more goals (19) than any other striker with the exception of Rooney, who has frequently operated in more withdrawn positions.
The man who was predictably heralded as the new Didier Drogba when he arrived at Chelsea now counts the legendary Ivorian among his biggest admirers. "He has been working a lot to improve and to make sure that his strength and technique can work together in this league," Drogba said on Goals on Sunday this week.
"I remember he had a lot to work technically when he first signed for Chelsea, but he has got his reward for that. I texted him a few weeks ago when he gave that pass to Arouna Kone with his left foot and I told him: 'The day you do that with your right foot…!' I told him he is on the way to becoming one of the greatest in this league."
So as Mourinho and Chelsea wonder what might have been, Everton celebrate a £28m bargain. Lukaku keeps getting better and better, and the scary thing is, he's only just getting started.
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