Football observation has been reduced to robotic cliches nowadays and I do question whether anybody objectively analyse facts and form their own opinion anymore. It’s a worrying trend.
The reaction to Lukaku scoring two goals for Belgium last night, two out of three chances, has been totally predictable. The brain seemingly cannot come to another conclusion than ‘see, when he’s playing in a ‘free-flowing’ attack, see what happens’. It’s as if there is an inability to recognise that we created the exact same chance for his first goal last night for him against Leicester, and he managed to miss it, for example. This has been a source of criticism of him. Because he didn’t miss it for Belgium doesn’t mathematically make it his club’s fault that he missed it here. It means he needs to be more consistent with his finishing.
Lukaku missed at least 3 decent to good/great opportunities against Spurs. Yet the next time he scores for his country, his woes will be blamed on his club teammates. I think before last night’s game, people would accept that he has been wasteful in front of goal for United. But it’s as if our computers have crashed seeing him score 2 goals for Belgium (and not out of 8 chances they gave him either) and we can’t process or equate that, given it’s the same human being, there can be different results in different teams.
Basically, Lukaku has missed many good chances for us this season. He didn’t miss them last night (well, he did miss one sitter). I’m sure we agree that much to be fact, so while I don’t have all the answers, let’s at least start from there and explore, rather than it now being the fault of our attack that he has been wasteful.