For Chelsea, Romelu Lukaku has become a problem due to his poor performance and off-color statements

It had to be him main offensive weapon Chelsea to defend the European title, but it has become a problem for the Blues, who accuse the poor state of form of Romelu Lukaku and the off-color statements of the belgian striker.

“It is the players who are at the service of the team and not ten players at the service of one”: the explosive statements of the coach Thomas Tuchel Last Monday, on the eve of the game in Brighton (1-1), they reflect the club’s discomfort with the attacker, for whom Chelsea paid Inter 115 million euros (130 million dollars) last summer.

All Chelsea fans expected to see the Belgian colossus chain goals to lead the team to try to revalidate the Champions League won last season and, above all, fight for the Premier League title with a Manchester City who failed in his attempt to sign Harry Kane and faced the season without a true center forward.

But after 23 games played by the Blues, 15 of them with Lukaku, the dreams of an English title have vanished and the Belgian striker only has 5 goals in his locker, far from the Egyptian Mohamed Salah (top scorer in the championship with 16 goals for Liverpool), less than four City players (Bernardo Silva and Sterling with 7, De Bruyne and Mahrez with 6) and surpassed even by his teammates Mason Mount (7) or Jorginho (6) .

And that until mid-October, Lukaku’s return to Stamford Bridge was considered a good operation.

interiorist at heart

Chelsea was leading in the championship and although Lukaku was not the player expected of him, he benefited from a period of adaptation to his new teammates and Tuchel’s systems, something understandable despite having already played in the Premier League (at Chelsea itself, Everton and Manchester United.

Everything began to get complicated with an injury with his national team in mid-October and later with a contagion to COVID-19, two events that made him miss half a dozen games.

And when his return seemed positive, with two goals and an assist in two games, the situation exploded with an interview with Sky Sport Italy in which he admittednot be happy with the situation” at Chelsea, although he was quick to add: “I have to work and I must not give up.”

He was even more surprised when he recognizedcarry Inter in the heartI really hope I can return” to the Nerazzurri club, who sold him to Chelsea in order to fill the safe.

The excuses offered later by the player did not serve to end the discomfort created by the interview in the Stamford Bridge offices, also published just before a match against Liverpool (2-2), when the Blues They were already beginning to show signs of weakness in the fight for the title.

Lukaku is aware that he will no longer benefit from any favored treatment.

welcome to reality

“Welcome to reality. We are in the spotlight and we are judged daily; that’s how it is when a player is decisive”, Tuchel warned him on Friday, whose team will face the Tottenham, which could cut his disadvantage with respect to the podium.

For this derby, Tuchel will not modify his usual 3-4-2-1 system to implement the 3-5-2 he used Antonio Conte at Inter and which allowed Lukaku to score 64 goals in 95 games.

If he plays, therefore, Lukaku will do so only at the top, despite the fact that in an interview in October on the FIFA website, the Belgian acknowledged that “I hate playing pivot”, since it forces him to play much more with his back to the rival goal and he cannot start from the side and in front of the goal to take more advantage of his qualities, which was how he played in Italy.

In Lukaku’s defense, the truth is also that he has rarely been accompanied on the wings by the same teammates, with which he has not been able to create automatisms either, and the irregular performance this season of offensive pieces such as Hakim Ziyech, Timo Werner or Christian Pulisic They are also a mitigating factor to explain the game of the Belgian giant.

Faced with this situation of reciprocal frustration (the club is not compensated for its investment and the player is not in the position he wants), what the former player Jamie Carragher described as a “ticking time bomb” in a column published Friday by The Telegraph, can end up exploding if the Blues they still do not react in the championship… when there is barely a month left for their round of 16 duel of the Champions League against the French Lille. (D)