If you ignore the politics over the price tag (which will make this role impossible even medium term) his ceiling at a club looking to win things is super sub.

If he had the self awareness to realise that he could have had a trophy laden career as a Solskjaer esque impact player.

 

17 minutes ago, mwblue10 said:

https://twitter.com/siphillipssport/status/1498007605830209539?s=21
 

Perfectly good goal taken away here. They put the line halfway down his arm...

Do you know what really pisses me off about this decision? you can guarantee that if scored a goal with that part of his arm, they would have disallowed it for hand ball. These refs make no sense.

1 minute ago, Scott Harris said:

Do you know what really pisses me off about this decision? you can guarantee that if scored a goal with that part of his arm, they would have disallowed it for hand ball. These refs make no sense.

No doubt about it

£100 million player benched for Champions League knockouts and a Cup final is quite significant.

It would probably be best for all parties if he did leave the club this summer. He wants to go back to Inter but we cannot afford to let him go unless they offer us a significant amount of money. Loans with options etc cannot be an option for us in this case. We need to recoup most of the money.

With all my negativity to him, I believe yesterday he was very effective and good when he came in.

If only this performance could be played every game, then I'd say it worth to work with him. 

Yeah looked decent and motivated. I liked that we got the ball to him early, much better. It was interesting to see him giving the team talk in ET as well

Yes he played ok. Scored one offside goal and created one offside goal. But I don't like watching Lukaku playing cf. Most of our player are not one on one player, he need to come closer to gice support.

 

Very harsh offside, VAR has gotten to the point now where it's made the game worse rather than improved it. Yes it regularly gets decisions right, but there definitely seems to be a bias favouring certain teams. How Rodrigo gets away with that handball was criminal. 

To everyone that has given up on him, I would reconsider. It's not that he can't be effective for us, we just need to find the right way to get the most out of him. Kai should 100% be playing up top but that doesn't mean Lukaku can't play with him too, it's probably better for him to play off Kai so he can have more positional freedom and touches in the game.

16 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

Do you know what really pisses me off about this decision? you can guarantee that if scored a goal with that part of his arm, they would have disallowed it for hand ball. These refs make no sense.

Did you see the pic of the line from VvD's arm on that thread?

https://twitter.com/Seun_Pin/status/1498046672399740931?s=20&t=Q9zYejZVtdA0PM24sSfhdw

Also, the line VAR used is drawn from UNDER VvD's foot - it goes through his toes. Hi foot is raised, so there should be a perpendicular line down from the end of his foot to the ground, and the offside line should have been drawn from there.

Edited February 28, 20224 yr by Backbiter

I have no problems as much with him yesterday. If he scored that goal in the final moments, I'd probably be celebrating and praising him. 

 

To be fair. Thought he played well when he came on. Certainly gave VDV a physical problem to solve. 

Edited February 28, 20224 yr by just

10 hours ago, IliyaKrostin said:

With all my negativity to him, I believe yesterday he was very effective and good when he came in.

If only this performance could be played every game, then I'd say it worth to work with him. 

I agree but at the same time this game and the Villa game also bring another issue. 

It seems the way to get the most productive performances out of him is to make him a super sub and if he was willing to accept that type of role he wouldn't have left us in the first place.

13 minutes ago, Argo said:

I agree but at the same time this game and the Villa game also bring another issue. 

It seems the way to get the most productive performances out of him is to make him a super sub and if he was willing to accept that type of role he wouldn't have left us in the first place.

I think is less of being a super sub and more of not being able to be a one man show. Rom cannot pull off to the right if we tell him to stick in the middle and play a target man.

He needs space to even be a little effective so if he is going to play in needs to be as the forward of Havertz as the main striker who will keep moving a lot to make space for him.

Thought he did well today and whilst im not a fan, that wonderful goal would of won us the cup, and im sad for us but also for him.

Yesterdays proved exactly why he doesnt fit though. Because he is only really useful for teams like Liverpool where we can exploit their high line, and especially late on when they were tiring. Most weeks we play against a packed defence and his skillset isnt equiped to deal with that

One potential bright thing on the horizon, if Roman doesn’t want his loans repaid, could we sell lumpkaku at a loss, say £ 40-50 million?

Yeah he’s got to go. Useless footballer who’d be a hindrance for any top teams.

No, Inter isn’t a top team.

Ship him off. He's worse than Abraham!

Really we had clown strikers over the years. 

The one positive of Roman leaving and the boards future being totally up in the air, is the pressure to make Lukaku work out, I doubt we’ll be seeing Tuchel playing him through bad form ever gain.

On 01/03/2022 at 07:48, Oli said:

Thought he did well today and whilst im not a fan, that wonderful goal would of won us the cup, and im sad for us but also for him.

Yesterdays proved exactly why he doesnt fit though. Because he is only really useful for teams like Liverpool where we can exploit their high line, and especially late on when they were tiring. Most weeks we play against a packed defence and his skillset isnt equiped to deal with that

I was going to post this last week 

Lukaku is lazy, does not press, sometimes barely move, plus his movement in the box is 🤮🤮  after saying all that, imo he is still playable against packed defense because he is our best finisher (which is why he was signed in the 1st place)

Our biggest problem against packed defense is not Lukaku. We had the same problem against packed defense last season even with Havertz as 9 , I even remembered somebody said that they did not want to see Havertz as this false 9 ever again. There were a lot of praise for Havertz against lille and pool, deservedly so, however those two team wanted to play ball. When you play packed defense it is whole another story. The space behind is non existant, the space between the line where havertz like to operate does not exist. 

The space is on the wing and deep and this is our biggest problem. Without chilwell and james, we have alonso and azpi play as wb/winger. Alonso is playable but azpi is not a wb, you have to use him very differently where you want him to be on the ball as little as possible which is complicated.

Now if we look at our midfield,only kova provide reasonable offensive output. We all know what kante is good at and jorgi game is all about keeping the ball deep rather than creating channces. We had similar problem under Conte but we had Fabregas who is a midfield maest

 

The defense was pretty packed for James goal this weekend. They had 9 of 11 between the goal and penalty spot when James finished... and Havertz was the only other player we had ahead of the mark. Havertz seems to get up higher for crosses and has more movement skills to free himself.

Edited March 7, 20224 yr by Wearyourblue

On 06/03/2022 at 22:54, Bob stark said:

I was going to post this last week 

Lukaku is lazy, does not press, sometimes barely move, plus his movement in the box is 🤮🤮  after saying all that, imo he is still playable against packed defense because he is our best finisher (which is why he was signed in the 1st place)

Our biggest problem against packed defense is not Lukaku. We had the same problem against packed defense last season even with Havertz as 9 , I even remembered somebody said that they did not want to see Havertz as this false 9 ever again. There were a lot of praise for Havertz against lille and pool, deservedly so, however those two team wanted to play ball. When you play packed defense it is whole another story. The space behind is non existant, the space between the line where havertz like to operate does not exist. 

The space is on the wing and deep and this is our biggest problem. Without chilwell and james, we have alonso and azpi play as wb/winger. Alonso is playable but azpi is not a wb, you have to use him very differently where you want him to be on the ball as little as possible which is complicated.

Now if we look at our midfield,only kova provide reasonable offensive output. We all know what kante is good at and jorgi game is all about keeping the ball deep rather than creating channces. We had similar problem under Conte but we had Fabregas who is a midfield maest

 

I agree that's where his best use for the rest of the season is.

That said is it worth while to keep him around just to be the can opener against the occasional packed defense?  Because in most games a fast free flowing attack seems to work the best and Lukaku doesn't fit into a fast free flowing attack.  

It may have been a mistake letting Giroud and Tammy go for Lukaku.  Both could have played that can opener role against a packed defense for far cheaper than Lukaku.  

On 07/03/2022 at 11:54, Bob stark said:

I was going to post this last week 

Lukaku is lazy, does not press, sometimes barely move, plus his movement in the box is 🤮🤮  after saying all that, imo he is still playable against packed defense because he is our best finisher (which is why he was signed in the 1st place)

Lukaku is only playable against defences that actually consider him a threat. That's how he can pull defences apart from time to time.

Against defences that actually know how to strategize against him, Lukaku becomes a training cone

2 minutes ago, Valpo said:

I agree that's where his best use for the rest of the season is.

That said is it worth while to keep him around just to be the can opener against the occasional packed defense?  Because in most games a fast free flowing attack seems to work the best and Lukaku doesn't fit into a fast free flowing attack.  

It may have been a mistake letting Giroud and Tammy go for Lukaku.  Both could have played that can opener role against a packed defense for far cheaper than Lukaku.  

Tammy struggled big time under Tuchel. Giroud was simply too old, he did not have the mobility to play in pl anymore imo.

But you are right we need a giroud type for backup, I honestly can't see kai last the whole season dueling against cb every game.

6 minutes ago, Deino said:

Lukaku is only playable against defences that actually consider him a threat. That's how he can pull defences apart from time to time.

Against defences that actually know how to strategize against him, Lukaku becomes a training cone

Lukaku is always a threat, he is still our best finisher. The moment he got that chance for his offside goal against pool, I knew that it will go in.

But I think Lukaku experiment is over,  his movement or lack of it really does not fit our team unless we switch to 352 then it is whole another story.

On 08/03/2022 at 23:13, Bob stark said:

Lukaku is always a threat, he is still our best finisher. The moment he got that chance for his offside goal against pool, I knew that it will go in.

But I think Lukaku experiment is over,  his movement or lack of it really does not fit our team unless we switch to 352 then it is whole another story.

Anyone is a threat from 6 yards with no defenders around. The problem with him is as you stated, lack of movement and lack of dangerous movement to get into those spaces