We're supposed to be the better team 90% of the games we play and as a regular starter and attacking focal point for the second best team in the league Lukaku, with his ability, hasn't performed as well as one could hope. We knew his general play had some issues but also that he scores enough goals to make up for it. However this year he's been one of the least efficient strikers among the top goalscorers in the league, which I won't nearly fault him entirely for, our attacking play hasn't been at all good enough.
Martial scored 18 goals for us in his very first season at 19 years and his efficiency has only gone up since, whilst at the same time his game time under Mourinho has moved in the opposite direction. It's not that wild to believe that with the same faith that Rom has had we'd had another 20 goal a season player in the team. As for alienation, he played less minutes for us last season than for example Asensio did for Real Madrid, a player who had the likes of Ronaldo, Bale and Isco to compete with, with only Rashford as competition. As soon as Sanchez stepped into the ground Martial was the one who had to move over, Sanchez who was coming off a pretty bad season by his own standards was still immediately preferred and given every chance to come into form. Not that surprisingly as Martial obviously wasn't a favorite of Mou's to begin with. The smart thing from the club from my point of view would've been to have the patience to find an experienced top quality attacker for the right wing to complement our young players who are only just coming into themselves. I wonder sometimes if we're more concerned with the now, and halting City rather than progressing ourselves.
Lukaku is also a pure CF and a fantastic goalscorer reaching his prime, while Martial is being deployed as a winger in a very rigid system. If Martial can manage to keep a similar pace to Lukaku that's a decent achievement on his part. 1 in 3 for a winger isn't bad, only the very best wide forwards in the world will give you better than that, probably only Mbppe in the u23 category. Alexis hasn't even managed to provide that for us, only scoring once every 6 starts or so. Martials not consistant enough but he's 22, at the same age Sanchez was having his breakthrough season at Udinese. The first time Alexis breached 20 goals/season was in 13/14 at 25 years of age.
I'm not going to lose my mind if Martials off as Alexis with Rashford backing up is a really good situation for the LW. I just think it's chaotic planning once again from the club and we're sending off our best talents whilst fumbling over ourselves.