Little Ralphy
Player Valuation: £15m
I think the clue is in the wording to be fair, but here goes. Look at his goals last season, put decent balls in the box and Lukaku will move towards the ball and try and score. I know it seems obvious that all strikers should do this but they don't. Some will make runs beforehand to try and get space and then wait for it, some make movement for space and then travel towards the ball as it comes in. Some wait for the second ball and attack that. Not everyone has the physical stature to attack every ball.
Lukaku is a big physical presence, maybe I'm old fashioned but you don't tend to see many wingers of that size in football. Lads of his shape tend to be centre foward or centre back. He knows how to play his size as well, perhaps that is why parts of his game still need work. He's an early developer physically and sometimes they come through able to dominate most players physically and other parts of their game go neglected. It's no surprised that in world football, it tends to be the little guys who have the best technique. That's because they need to develop that to gain an edge over physically superior players. Players as big as Lukaku could afford a less than perfect first touch in their younger days because they had the physical strength to make sure they retained the ball anyway. I think this is why players of that kind tend to really shine once they've ironed out those areas and learned the other aspects of their game. To be fair to Lukaku he's still successful as he is now, if he can keep improving the other areas of his game he'll be lethal and we'll no doubt be selling him for way more than we ever paid for him one day. Hopefully he can push us further in the meantime.
How many times has he actually played central this season? Especially given he wasn't fit at the start due to not really being involved in pre-season and then having an injury. I think given those circumstances it's unfair to judge him on a lack of goals so far. You can argue a case for his all round play fair enough.
I think his touch has improved loads since last season, and in terms of link up play, we aren't really getting loads of players around him to link up with, especially when he is out wide. Perhaps @1966efc is right and we haven't currently got the players around him for his game to flourish. I still feel that Martinez needs to shoulder a lot of that blame though. Sure for the game in March, Lukaku wide right against Arsenal worked, but it hasn't really worked since and it takes a lot away from a guy who offers a whole lot more than the guy they put there in his place.
