Chelsea looks dead set on signing Romelu Lukaku. He’s not the flashy signing Erling Haaland would be, but he’s still a megastar striker. Lukaku is also one of the most oddly criticized players of his ability.
There are many arguments against Lukaku as a player. Almost none of them make any sense. So, without further ado, let’s destroy the most common of the silly arguments.
He doesn’t score enough against big teams!
This is perhaps the most famous stick to use against Lukaku. Despite all his goals in the Premier League, he always struggled to score against the top teams. In his seven Premier League seasons, he only scored 16 goals against the traditional top six.
And you know what? It doesn’t matter. Chelsea needs goals. Specifically, Chelsea needs goals against the teams that sit back and deny space. Thomas Tuchel’s side didn’t have an issue when teams opted to come on to the Blues. The issue was when they dared Chelsea to break them down. Lukaku is the man to break through that.
If Lukaku is scoring 15 plus goals a season against just minnows, that’s exactly what Chelsea needs. It’s like Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas’ arrival. In 2013/2014, Chelsea had no way of breaking down defensive teams. The club got those two players and suddenly they were Premier League champions again.
The club isn’t going to win the Premier League on the back of beating top six rivals alone, which they already seem to have figured out. The club needs to pick up all the points they should be picking up in games they are favorites. That’s where the club has stumbled most in recent years and if Lukaku can score, that matters more than who it is against.
He has a bad first touch and bad technique!
It’s tricky to figure out exactly where this originates. Is it because Lukaku is a big guy and big players (especially strikers) are seen as physical monsters rather than technical ones? Is it something more nefarious? Is it focusing too much on his last season at Manchester United and ignoring literally the rest of his career?
Regardless, anyone saying Lukaku has a bad first touch or a bad technique probably hasn’t seen him play since he left United. Not that he was ever nearly as bad as people say (who ever is?), but Antonio Conte went out of his way to do something truly radical: coach Lukaku to be better.
For months after arriving at Inter, Lukaku was only allowed to play with his back to goal. Over and over, he was drilled to hold defenders off while making solid touches to teammates. And, lo and behold, coaching works. Lukaku’s technique improved immensely over the past two seasons.
But, again, it’s worth mentioning it was never as bad as advertised. In the 2018 World Cup, Lukaku was used almost like an inside forward in a 3-4-2-1 rather than an out and out striker. Roberto Martinez did this because he could trust Lukaku’s ability to find space and dribble through opposition when he received the ball. None of that is possible for a player with a poor touch and technique.
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Serie A is easy that’s why he looks good!
The Premier League has had a renaissance as of late, but even when English teams were struggling to get past the Champions League round of 16, there was the narrative that it was the toughest league in the world. Only the creme de la creme can play in the Premier League well.
Which, of course, isn’t really true. Obviously there is a big difference between the Premier League and the Eredivisie, but the difference between the big four/five leagues is negligible. The main thing that separates these leagues is their differences, not their difficulty.
The Premier League is difficult because teams from the top to the bottom go full throttle. Serie A is different because there is so much more focus on structure throughout. A reason some believe that Serie A players struggle in the Premier League is because they lose a lot of that structure in the transition.
But, perhaps more than anything else, is the fit of the club. Mohamed Salah was not a good Chelsea player. He had been great in Serie A and was great when he returned there. Liverpool decided to give him a second chance in the Premier League and he became one of the league’s best players almost overnight. The setup at Liverpool with Jurgen Klopp allowed Salah to succeed when Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea couldn’t do the same.
So, more than anything, it’s not about the league the player is coming from, it’s about the environment they are in and the environment they are going to. For Lukaku, West Brom and Everton were good environments. Manchester United was until Mourinho was sacked. Inter Milan was a good environment for Lukaku throughout.
Basically, if you trust Tuchel as a coach, Lukaku’s ability from Inter will translate well. Lukaku didn’t “get good” because the league he was playing in was easier, he got better (because he was already good) because of the right environment.
He flopped in Premier League already!
Yes, this is a real thing people say. So, let’s play a game. In how many Premier League seasons did Lukaku fail to outscore every Chelsea player in the same year? And under what circumstances?
The answer is two. In seven Premier League seasons, Lukaku outscored every single Chelsea player in the league five times. He did this with West Brom, Everton, and Manchester United. The two years he failed to outscore Chelsea players were 2014/2015 (Chelsea won the league, Lukaku made his transfer to Everton permanent) and 2018/2019 (Eden Hazard had his career year and Lukaku struggled in a season that saw Mourinho sacked and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer not rate him).
To say a player who has scored over 100 goals and assisted nearly half as many more is a flop is just ridiculous. Few strikers can compete with Lukaku’s goal tally in the same time. And he’s only gotten better as a player in Serie A. So, yes, let Chelsea bring back a player who has already done it in the Premier League and let them do it better this time.
He costs too much! We should just spend that on Erling Haaland!
The main source of confusion here is Haaland’s price is often being shown in pounds (150 million) and Lukaku’s is often being shown in euros (if we say 120 million euros, it’s about 102 million pounds). So the prices aren’t nearly as close as some are making them out to be.
But, another important source of information is that Haaland’s price isn’t really 150 million. That’s just the transfer fee, which doesn’t include the nearly 50 million more it will cost in agent fees. And that’s likely being conservative.
Any deal will involve agent fees, but Lukaku’s agent is highly unlikely to charge as much as Mino Raiola. Worst case, Chelsea is likely considering 130 million versus 200 million.
Beyond that, Dortmund don’t want to sell even with a buy clause going active next summer. Haaland doesn’t want to force the issue. Inter Milan are tempted by the bid now and Lukaku is interested enough to consider the move. It’s better to go for the striker that will join than the one that won’t, especially with time running out in the window.
Might this mean Chelsea can’t get Haaland next summer? Probably but that doesn’t really change anything does it? If fans already thought it was this summer or bust, well it’s been bust for a while. The presence of Lukaku doesn’t change whether or not Haaland would join next summer if many already thought Chelsea had no chance.
It looks bad for us to bring players back!
This is an argument that has never made much sense. Whether it is about Declan Rice or Romelu Lukaku, some just don’t like the idea of bringing a player back after they were deemed not good enough to hold on to.
We’ll keep this one short and just say that if a player is good at the moment, their history is meaningless. Don’t miss out on good players because of some misplaced sense of pride. Pride doesn’t put goals in the net and points on the table.
He’s too old to spend this much on!
This one is tied a bit to the Haaland stuff. Lukaku is 28 and there is a fear that A: he will have no resale value and B: he’ll hit the wall and start declining much sooner.
A makes little sense because Haaland has no resale value if bought this summer either. There is a reason Chelsea is the only club that even considered 150 million for him. There is also a good reason why Kylian Mbappe looks far more likely to leave as a free agent than for Paris Saint Germain to sell him. When you’re paying that much for a player, there simply aren’t any clubs that can afford much more if it comes to a transfer.
If Chelsea bought Haaland this summer, they might get some of it back at a future date, but not all of it. Even worse would be getting none of it as free agency might be the only way a transfer could realistically happen. Either way, Haaland and Lukaku aren’t signings that are going to make Chelsea money.
B is something that only makes sense if the last season you saw of Lukaku was his United season. When most talk about a player declining in their 30s, what they usually mean is they lose pace. That’s always something to fear for players who rely heavily on their pace to beat opponents. Lukaku isn’t one of those players. His style of play is about positioning and reading the game. These are traits that age slowly. It would not be a surprise at all to see Lukaku play at a high level all the way till 35 or later like Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Didier Drogba. So long as he stays healthy, he’ll be good to go for a long time yet which minimizes the fact that he’s already 28.
And, above all else, if you want a top five striker in the world, you have to pay a top five transfer fee to make it happen regardless of their age.
And many more!
This article was already getting lengthy because people are making the most insane excuses for Chelsea not to sign a top five striker in the world. Obviously the Haaland transfer would have hit differently, but Lukaku is right on the same tier of striker. The Blues need someone to score goals and if Lukaku is the one that will actually be able to join, he is immediately the most valuable player to the club at the moment.
He is a top five striker in the world. Anyone saying different is simply wrong and this article has tried to address the most common “reasons” as to why Lukaku isn’t rated highly. There are many more and some will continue to come up with more until they are proven wrong and delete 15 tweets. Instead, get in on Lukaku at the ground floor and be happy Chelsea is signing a megastar that actually seems to want to play for the club.