Everton players asked manager to play more directly, says Romelu Lukaku
• Roberto Martínez asked for flexibility after four losses
• We needed to play to my strengths more, Lukaku added
• Match report: Everton 1-1 West Ham United
Romelu Lukaku has revealed that Everton players asked Roberto Martínez to change to a more direct approach before their
1-1 draw against West Ham in the FA Cup on Tuesday.
Everton had lost four consecutive games going into the match and the Belgium forward, who scored the equaliser in stoppage time at Goodison Park, said: “The players were asking about going more direct. I asked them, and we all said to the manager: ‘Can we play a bit more direct sometimes?’ We have a style of play where we keep the ball a lot, but knew we needed to take more responsibility, play to my strengths more, and they did it perfectly.
"We mixed up how we played a bit more, at times we were a bit more direct. For me that makes it easier, because when I am one v one, running on a defender, that gives me a better chance.”
For Lukaku, 21, the equaliser ended a difficult run of six games without a goal and also marked his return to the starting lineup after two games among the substitutes. The former Anderlecht and Chelsea striker wants to keep improving and not give Martínez any reason to drop him again.
“After two games on the bench I knew it was time to react,” he said. “I wanted to show the manager how he can count on me. I wanted to show it was just a temporary thing, and now I am ready to move on and push myself to the limit. I want to win silverware, I want to end up as high as we can in the league and we have five months to do that. I just want to play my best football now.”
Lukaku, who signed for £28m from Chelsea last summer, has been through a worse goalscoring run. When he was 16, he went 10 games without a goal at Anderlecht.
He said: “I knew it was my first year and I had never played with men before. I had gone straight from the youth team to playing for the first team. I didn’t even have a pre-season, I was just dropped straight into the team. I scored and stayed in the side. Everyone could see I was a big guy but my muscles and joints weren’t prepared for it, so the tiredness was always going to come.
“There was pressure from others to do well because I was playing in the first team, and I struggled to cope with it. But I moved on and as a footballer you know these things will happen again. But when it did, because I had been through it before, I knew I just had to stay focused on my performances because I would come through it again.
“The manager said I can go on a run of goals now and I’ll be doing my best to do that. I want to play to the maximum and show he can rely on me.”
Everton, who are four points clear of the relegation zone, need Lukaku, who has scored eight goals this season, to stay in goalscoring mode. Their next game is at home to Manchester City and the striker has told his team-mates to take the game to the Premier League champions. “It’s up to us – we need to take the initiative,” he said. “We have to try to get in their faces and be clinical in front of goal because you never know. With teams like City you can be winning 2-0 but they can come back, so we need to manage the game.”
