Before Hakim Ziyech’s first goal was disallowed at Selhurt Park, and while his teammates sprinted to the corner flag to celebrate, Romelu Lukaku turned to the home supporters in the main stand and raised a shushing finger to his lips. If it was an attempt to silence his critics, it was fittingly short-lived. As the VAR official intervened, the stadium erupted and jeered and, although Chelsea did eventually snatch a victory that was closer to an act of theft, it will have brought Lukaku little personal redemption.
After all, in a Chelsea team built successfully and scrupulously in Thomas Tuchel’s image, Lukaku’s torment against Crystal Palace felt distinctly individual. Chugging and cut adrift up front, he was isolated, unavailable and slipping over the horizon as play unfolded behind him. And in the rare moments when Lukaku wasn’t anchored to Joachim Andersen, he was becoming increasingly frustrated with every failed run, chasing a vision his teammates are struggling to see, let alone enact. Lukaku’s contribution of just seven touches in ninety minutes set a new and miserable Premier League record. Even Tuchel was at a loss to explain it. “I’m not so sure if I have a good answer,” he said when informed of the statistic. “I don’t know what it says. It says he was obviously not involved and could not make a point today.”
Six months into Lukaku’s £97.5m homecoming, with goalscoring struggles sandwiching that divisive interview, few could argue that Chelsea are seeing the profits of his return. Five league goals this season haven’t provided an upgrade on Tammy Abraham and, as Lukaku pointed out himself in his interview with Sky Italy, he is not a natural fit under Tuchel, with Saturday’s descent into purgatory hardly a novel voyage. He is an iceberg too great to leave out but one that increasingly seems to block the route forwards, and it is no clearer how this rocky reunion will be kept afloat.
When Lukaku was struggling at Manchester United, he attributed his inconsistency under Jose Mourinho to his teammates not yet understanding his movement. The wingers weren’t attuned to his hold-up play and the midfield was too static to drive into the space when Lukaku dropped deep. The players might be different now, but there are startling similarities in the results. Take United’s defeat in the Champions League against Juventus in 2018, when Lukaku’s failure to have a single shot, make a tackle or even commit a foul prompted the same sense of aggravating mystery. “[It’s not just] the goals he is not scoring but also in his confidence, in his movement, his touch. He is not linking the game well with the team,” Mourinho said as criticism mounted.
Chelsea might be far removed from the deeper dysfunction at United but the underlying issue remains the same. Lukaku has played almost 2,000 minutes alongside his new teammates but seems no closer to working in tandem with them. And while Mourinho could be accused of being abrasive and inflexible, Tuchel has experimented with a 4-1-4-1 formation and played Kai Havertz as a second striker off Lukaku’s shoulder in an attempt to mimic the Belgian’s prolific connection with Lautaro Martinez.
But despite Lukaku’s exceptional goalscoring record, Tuchel’s accomodations have done little to smooth a clash of ideologies without an obvious compromise. The coach can hardly overhaul his possession-based system to replicate the quick transitions and counter-attacking approach of Inter Milan, while Lukaku might fairly argue the reason Chelsea paid such a premium for him last summer was because of what he did best.
It would be unfair to ignore the other mitigating factors behind Chelsea’s lack of fluidity. Perhaps most significantly, the continued absence of Ben Chilwell and Reece James has left Lukaku without what had been Chelsea’s best attacking supply line. With Andreas Christensen and Malang Sarr starting as makeshift full-backs at the weekend, there was little impetus down either flank and it was no surprise that Ziyech’s late winner was the direct product of Marcos Alonso’s introduction from the bench.
But while in the past many of the subtler facets to Lukaku’s game have been disguised by an obsession with his raw strength, that was a more plain and curious weakness against Palace. Throughout the match, Lukaku repeatedly lost the physical battle with Andersen, failing to win a single aerial duel, and after being bundled to the floor by the centre-back early in the second half, Lukaku’s frustration almost boiled over as the pair tangled trying to get up.
You got the sense that wasn’t just emblematic of a disjointedness but a wider loss of confidence. A desire to impress and alleviate the pressure so fierce that it only achieves the opposite. And so if there remains no clear tactical solution to coaxing the best out of Lukaku, perhaps the answer could actually be found elsewhere. Mourinho might have clashed with Lukaku publicly and privately, but he knows what makes certain players tick.
“He needs to feel he’s the man and he’s the number one and loved,” Mourinho said last summer when asked about Lukaku’s spectacular form since leaving United. “He was loved by the coach and supporters and made a big impact [at Inter]. The press was also supporting him. He got that love.
“If he didn’t score goals [for United] what he did for the team was not enough. It hurt him.”
After leaving United, Lukaku admitted himself that he was far from immune to the criticism and that he “didn’t feel protected” by the club. And so, while his interview hardly curried favour with Chelsea’s fans, perhaps it’s that sense of love that he’s lacking and needs more than most might believe. His shushing of the home crowd on Saturday wasn’t just an act of provocation, it was a gesture made out of pride and hurt. There can be no doubting Lukaku’s urgency to prove his critics wrong, but as well as tweaks on the tactics board, it might just require an added human touch too.
