Started out this season rooting for him but watching him semi-regularly has turned me into a hater. Does anyone actually enjoy watching Lukaku? Not highlights, or those fleeting moments where he turns into the player everyone imagines him to be, but actual full matches? He's the same frustrating player he's always been. A lumbering, uninspiring oaf 95% of the time who, if he doesn't score, just ambles around and barely does anything to help his teammates but point in a vague direction and moan when the pass doesn't reach his cement feet between the three defenders surrounding him because he hasn't moved. Hardly even bothers making runs in behind any more unless there's a counter, instead he wants to post up with his back to goal like it's 1990's NBA and he's Hakeem Olajuwon. Plays more like Andre Drummond.
Doesn't press, still terrible at hold up play, barely jumps for long balls. All he wants to do is score without putting any real effort into actually creating opportunities through his movement. The margin of error is so tight with a striker like this, everything coming into him has to be precise and if there's one thing this Chelsea team is lacking, it's that precision from their forwards (and also a bit of magic you get from the KDB, Salah, Bruno types). And yet, with these same players behind him, it feels like Werner gets about 3 to 4 great chances a game. He makes a mess of all of them, of course, but it shows that this team is not incapable of creating good chances.
I thought Chelsea's main problem last season under Tuchel wasn't creating chances, it was finishing them. Now they barely do either. Of course it's early days and it feels like Tuchel is still trying to figure out the right combination of his many talented but flaky forwards to put behind Lukaku (and their least flaky/most consistent one in Mount being off-form/unfit has been a huge loss), but Lukaku is a huge part of the problem. He almost always is, despite his numbers.
Looks very dangerous the other 5% of the time when everything is going right for him though, gotta give him that. World class.