I can't believe there a still quite a few apologists for Lukaku. He is a big time flop plain and simple. The signs were all there from all of his previous clubs, he's a flat track bully who offers little to nothing against top sides and is not destined for anything more than that. He can't even use one of his best attributes to his advantage very well i.e. his strength. He doesn't bully defenders and make life difficult the way people like Drogba and Costa did who have similar strength but put it to better use. If he doesn't score he's basically a passenger as he offers so little in build up play. It's not about money he is just not good enough to be the main striker of a team with aims of winning the league and it is unlikely he ever will be.
9
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 51
- Goals
- 27
- Assists
- 10
- Yellow cards
- 3
- Status
Consider me surprised. Like I said, if that was a foul suffered by our player I'd be incensed.
It just looked clumsy to me. Neither malicious nor reckless. Ake wasn’t hurt and didn’t seem too bothered. I wouldn’t mind seeing another replay though, if you’re so certain it was a bad one. I haven’t watched it again since it happened.
I can't find it online. I think what saved Lukaku was Ake's reaction. He made absolutely no fuss about it. Had he stayed down I'm not sure what the ref would have done. Clumsy yes. Looked very nasty.
I'm bit surprised people aren't pleased with Lukaku yesterday. I thought he had a good game.
But lucky not to get 2x yellow...
But lucky not to get 2x yellow...
Inzaghi was clinical, Lukaku is not.
Fair enough but we've also been rubbish in the big games so far. Three of the worst games this season performance-wise overall from the team were Chelsea, Liverpool and City. He was far from being the only player that played badly in those games but in games like Liverpool you can hardly pinpoint to him as he can't get much involved when the ball isn't being played forward. Against Arsenal he was good although he didn't score.
Everton getting up to £90m for a flat track bully and not so clinical poacher like Lukaku may go down as a brilliant piece of business, for them.
I am sorry but you've got to be a bit reasonable. How can he be a big time flop? he has played 17 league games. What if he scores 11 in the 2nd half of the season, including against top 10 sides, you'd look pretty silly. I admit much of what
you said is true in terms of all round game and being inferior in terms of using his size. Yes, Lukaku isn't much of a battery ram, yes he isn't very skillful, yes he isn't a deep dropping creative force like Zlatan, but he could just as easily go on a mad run until the end of the season. Costa had a terrible 2nd half of the season in 2015 remember.
This means nothing to me. Someone please explain.
He’s had bad patches at Chelsea and Everton, even West Brom for little bit but usually comes out of them and I just hope he’s gonna do the same here. If not he’s an expensive mistake for sure.
I don't mind players having bad patches. Every player does. But they need to be trying their hardest and he is incredibly lazy at times. There were a few counter attacks last night where he didn't even run to get into the box, never mind sprint. We had a few chances to cross but there wasn't anyone in the box and Lukaku was walking towards the box. He should be breaking his bollox to get in.
He was dead on his feet by the end of the game. There was no lack of effort on his part last night.
It's actually his work rate I've been most impressed with since he's arrived. At Everton I did think he could be lazy at times, here he's generally been giving everything he has. If anything he looks like he needs a rest.
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I’m guessing he covers more distance per game than any other player we have. From his performances and contributions so far, surely that’s the last criticism that can be applied to him.
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I think he will be fine. Will comfortably hit 30 goals this season, with people saying we and He are both terrible. A good season with a more consistent United probably means 40+
Gomez had a 39 and 41 goal season and Bayern still got rid...a not so clinical goal poached can be a liability despite the numbers he puts up.
Only just watched the extended highlights now, can’t believe Lukaku fluffed a clearance on a corner again 
So full members can bully rookie members. Class!
Lukaku is NOT lazy.
I've got, and have always had, a fair few doubts about Rom. Doubts I wilfully pushed aside in that weird bout of self-motivated positivity that washes over you after every new signing. But I still feel it's too early to write him off, or go full metal jacket on him. He is young, and the top scorer in the second highest scoring team in the league. So not exactly DOA...However, I do want to take issue with one particular recurrent line of defence.
The idea that he just needs better service, or a more favourable system is all well and good, but a Manchester United striker shouldn’t really need either of those things. Sure, with a proper RW he might have 4 or 5 more goals, but if he was a genuine world class forward he'd have 9 or 10. When we had Giggs & Becks on the wings people used to say any striker could score 20 a season at Man Utd. Yet at no point during that time did we actually have just a “decent” striker. Because why would we? Who builds a world class midfield just to set up goals for a decent striker? Strikers cost the biggest bucks. A Manchester United striker should thrive when given chances, but also be able to create them out of nothing. Otherwise what’s the £££ for? When we could apparently just stick a pole on a Rumba and “give it better service”?
Our most recent title win was almost entirely down to having a striker who was threatening from anywhere. Who could win a game even when our midfield wasn’t firing (which was often) That's why we bought him! That's why clubs like Man Utd buy strikers. That's why they're expensive. If he needs it put on a plate he’s not up to snuff I’m afraid.
The idea that he just needs better service, or a more favourable system is all well and good, but a Manchester United striker shouldn’t really need either of those things. Sure, with a proper RW he might have 4 or 5 more goals, but if he was a genuine world class forward he'd have 9 or 10. When we had Giggs & Becks on the wings people used to say any striker could score 20 a season at Man Utd. Yet at no point during that time did we actually have just a “decent” striker. Because why would we? Who builds a world class midfield just to set up goals for a decent striker? Strikers cost the biggest bucks. A Manchester United striker should thrive when given chances, but also be able to create them out of nothing. Otherwise what’s the £££ for? When we could apparently just stick a pole on a Rumba and “give it better service”?
Our most recent title win was almost entirely down to having a striker who was threatening from anywhere. Who could win a game even when our midfield wasn’t firing (which was often) That's why we bought him! That's why clubs like Man Utd buy strikers. That's why they're expensive. If he needs it put on a plate he’s not up to snuff I’m afraid.
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That's possibly not a good thing. I really don't like how he is dropping back between the lines all the time trying to get involved. More often than not he'll be outplayed in midfield and it's wasting his best attributes. Strikers like him spend their days off the shoulder of the last man, conserving their energy for the runs when they get the chance. It's exactly what he did when he was playing for Everton and scoring for fun.
I agree with you and came in the thread to suggest just this.
I appreciate the work he’s putting in but I think he’s unnecessarily sacrificing himself a lot of the time.
By all means work the channels and drop into the 10 area to let runners go past him but he’s spending too much time around the half way line and even in his own half.
He needs to get a bit of arrogance back in his game and start playing with the mentality of a top striker. Get greedy and conserve his energy for developing goal scoring opportunities rather than trying to cover for Young one minute and letting Valencia overlap him the next.
Only just watched the extended highlights now, can’t believe Lukaku fluffed a clearance on a corner again
I'd keep him away from our own box tbh
Agree on many points. I think people on some level already know that the quality of service he needs is also a function of how limited he is as a footballer. But there are times where people heap too much blame on the other attackers to absolve Lukaku, for instance, many of his lost/miscontrolled/misplaced touches or passes are potential scoring opportunities he kills off in the early build up phase. A practical example is how Rooney in 2010 got many goals from Valencia's crossing by finding him on the wing in the buildup. A striker contributes to his own service
I disagree on the basis that we haven't always had world class strikers at all, we have had 'decent' strikers who fit the system well.
In the PL era our top scoring strikers have included:
Hughes
Kanchelskis
Solksjaer
Cole
Yorke
Sheringham
Berbatov
Rooney Mk.2
You could even argue Cantona
None of them were world class players outside our club but they were played in a system that got them to that level. Lukaku would not be out of place in that list and he has shown much more than most of them had before they joined us.
Van Persie/van Nistelrooy are not the norm for us.
Fans of most clubs would eat their left nut to have had 2 or 3 of those strikers play for their club over the last 20 years let alone 9 of them.
The inherent flaw with some of these Mandžukić reached the Champions League final or we had not-so-great strikers in the past as well arguments is that they fail to consider the composition of the team as whole while fixating on alleviating the criticism of an individual, or the role said individual had within the team. You can have some less the ideal elements, yes - it's unreasonable to expect top echelon performers at every positions, but you can't have entire clusters at once, like we do at this moment in time relative to the strongest team in the competition - which adds another layer altogether. On top of that, José isn't a renowned offensive guru and doesn't have a track record of making attackers transcend their usual level or making that particular department perform at a level that exceeds the sum of parts. When Bayern had Mandžukić, they had Ribéry and Robben out wide - the royalty of wing pairings, and close to peak Müller as forward - you could put a bunch of hard-working strikers in there in lieu of Mandžukić per Heynckes' overall scheme and they'd probably still win the Champions League based on the strength of the entire XI - which included the Martínez/Schweinsteiger axis in midfield and Alaba/Lahm down the flanks. When United had slightly lesser names at the striker position, we had one of the strongest and most diverse midfield quartets in football and/or Fergie's divine hand to steer us in the right direction in attack.
As things stand, we have persisting issues on the wings and no continuity at the #10 position (which is fundamental to a Mourinho team), so the criticism is magnified - unfair on Lukaku yes, he is not Van Persie in terms of being an all-encompassing presence at the position - we knew that, and certain factors are totally out of his control, but there's a natural and heavy weight of expectation attached to him given the fact that he is supposed to be a marquee performer with the Galáctico-esque 6th highest fee of all time on top of considerable wages. Unless a lot of qualitative and structural problems in attack are sorted (e.g. we could also stand to improve the consistency of our crosses - he had Baines and Coleman at Everton after all), United will continue to be a bit blunt at times and Lukaku's flaws will be magnified - especially when he doesn't deliver in pivotal matches and is asked to handle a greater set of instructions than he was used to.
Even if everything is fixed, one overarching conundrum will remain - is Lukaku the best a club of United's stature should aspire to in terms of both fit and ability, or can we do better in the long run? You could argue that he has the weakest overall skillset of all consistently first-choice Mourinho strikers since Chelsea XI bar a younger version of Higuaín who wasn't particularly complete, wasn't a de-facto starter or exceedingly prolific - Drogba obviously, then Ibrahimović and Milito at Internazionale, Benzema at Madrid, and Costa at Chelsea (bit up and down in the second season, but a mighty fine and complete striker when they won the title). A myriad question related to him will have to be answered one way or another as the team evolves under Mourinho - good news for Lukaku is that Mourinho isn't likely to replace him for the next couple seasons at the very least, Martial and Rashford are still developing, and there are very few attainable and better strikers than him out there anyway - that will likely buy him enough time to prove himself (or not).
As things stand, we have persisting issues on the wings and no continuity at the #10 position (which is fundamental to a Mourinho team), so the criticism is magnified - unfair on Lukaku yes, he is not Van Persie in terms of being an all-encompassing presence at the position - we knew that, and certain factors are totally out of his control, but there's a natural and heavy weight of expectation attached to him given the fact that he is supposed to be a marquee performer with the Galáctico-esque 6th highest fee of all time on top of considerable wages. Unless a lot of qualitative and structural problems in attack are sorted (e.g. we could also stand to improve the consistency of our crosses - he had Baines and Coleman at Everton after all), United will continue to be a bit blunt at times and Lukaku's flaws will be magnified - especially when he doesn't deliver in pivotal matches and is asked to handle a greater set of instructions than he was used to.
Even if everything is fixed, one overarching conundrum will remain - is Lukaku the best a club of United's stature should aspire to in terms of both fit and ability, or can we do better in the long run? You could argue that he has the weakest overall skillset of all consistently first-choice Mourinho strikers since Chelsea XI bar a younger version of Higuaín who wasn't particularly complete, wasn't a de-facto starter or exceedingly prolific - Drogba obviously, then Ibrahimović and Milito at Internazionale, Benzema at Madrid, and Costa at Chelsea (bit up and down in the second season, but a mighty fine and complete striker when they won the title). A myriad question related to him will have to be answered one way or another as the team evolves under Mourinho - good news for Lukaku is that Mourinho isn't likely to replace him for the next couple seasons at the very least, Martial and Rashford are still developing, and there are very few attainable and better strikers than him out there anyway - that will likely buy him enough time to prove himself (or not).
Great strong header, one of the reasons why I was glad we signed him. Shame he didn't celebrate the goal.
I get the feeling he is playing to the managers orders.....defence starts from the front etc.
The separation is that they are all vastly better ballers than Lukaku. Some of then even manage to play midfield at times which is something Lukaku would not have the footballing ability to do. Out of that list I would say he can score as well as anyone but the other areas of his game are a downgrade. Hughes was flairey as hell.
Hard for him to show what we bought him for with the current level of service. Stick with him. He will come good.
I think Dion Dublin is a better comparison of level than that list of players.
The whole of your middle paragraph is why I wouldn't have gone near him at any point in time, personally. The technical level, that brilliance and innovation, he lacks it. There's no guile to him and no finesse. There's also a lack of deftness. This is my own subjective issue, admittedly, because I like my strikers to be brilliant and nothing less than that will do - RVP, Yorke, Cantona, Rooney, RVN, Saha and so on at their best epitomised the magic I've come to expect from a United striker.
That feeling something magical may happen is devoid when it comes to Lukaku. That's not his fault, and it's not an issue, per se, but the raw, blunt force style of play has limitations unless your name is Peyroteo. Even then, in terms of iron-handedness, Lukaku is not a hard-man or any kind of Drogba or Duncan Ferguson or Joe Jordan etc. etc. so he's a bit of a nomad when it comes to definition as a player at the level he's being asked to play at - you also can't put all your hope in him like you could with a number of forwards listed for us in the previous paragraph because you've half a mind he's not up to it when push comes to shove.
Still, these may be growing pains and, perhaps, he finds his own way and unique style whilst here. As he is not a player with magic in his feet, you have to turn to the next best thing and hope that supply to him can be plentiful enough that he gets his chances to convert in the way that he does. As you say, that's not what we're used to here (strikers who can't make their own chances) but that is by-the-by, as Lukaku is our #9 and we've got to do what we can to facillitate his game. The benefit to that, however, is that with or without Lukaku in the team, an elite supply line will be fantastic for whoever gets the gig and can help us to grow.
I'm not entirely sure how long Lukaku will get to make his probation a permanent tenancy as our uncontested #9 - the notion he'll have years to do so, I'm not sure of because if Mourinho catches wind of a true elite striker being available, he will snap him up - but whilst he has his chance, you have to hope things can work for him, and by proxy, us, as it would enable strengthening and financial outlay elsewhere without growing concerns our #9 will need to be improved upon sooner rather than later.
Even if his style is not the preferred way for an elite striker, the measure of him is going to be what he can do vis-a-vis what he cannot when the team is moulded to suit his game. I feel that is the time Jose will be looking at him with judgmental rather than sympathetic and hopeful eyes and at that point, he'll either find himself out of the team or out of the club if he cannot handle either the competition for his place or the notion of being a sub rather than a starter.
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I get the criticism but let me make a point, teams like United scout and make detailed reports on players they want to buy. All of Lukaku's weaknesses: a poor first touch, subpar technique, and underwhelming hold up play is something United and Mourinho knew about before shelling 95mil pounds on him. So why then, despite knowing this the coaching staff and Mourinho making his weaknesses a CORE part of the teams attacking strategy? Lukaku is a poacher, he makes great runs, and shoots the ball with immense strength; that strenght of his just isn't being taken advantage of, in fact these days it's rarely being used.
If Mou wanted a target man, a player capable of holding things up on his own and creating goals by himself (Drogba, Costa) then he should have gone for one, not Lukaku. You can't just expect a 24 year old player to improve so much on his weaknesses in the span of 2-3months, to the point it becomes a focal point of his game. So given all this, however badly Lukaku performs, it's not his fault.
If Mou wanted a target man, a player capable of holding things up on his own and creating goals by himself (Drogba, Costa) then he should have gone for one, not Lukaku. You can't just expect a 24 year old player to improve so much on his weaknesses in the span of 2-3months, to the point it becomes a focal point of his game. So given all this, however badly Lukaku performs, it's not his fault.
He’s just going through a rough patch. Most goal scorers have that. I don’t see the work rate issue people on here talk about. He definitely works hard. These are real human players. We cannot expect him to be a video game character who just runs and sprints entire time you expect him to.
He won us the game midweek. Simple!
Might have to consider Mou didn't exactly know what he was getting. He wouldn't willingly sign a striker that can't play effectively as a lone striker or targetman as that's what his favoured tactics require.
Peter Crouch would have scored that goal also, however that is not sufficient reason to sign him either.
It puzzles me how often he gets bullied in the air by defenders.
You'd think a unit like him would put himself about a bit.
You'd think a unit like him would put himself about a bit.
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