Romelu Lukaku has struggled to fill the void left by Olivier Giroud at Chelsea despite the £95.8m disparity between either of their summer price tags. The latter swapped the Blues for the Rossoneri a month prior to the Belgium international returning to west London, in what was portrayed as a like-for-like upgrade. In the summer, the Blues boss specified that he was after a Giroud-esque back-to-goal striker. Speaking just days before the Belgian’s arrival, Tuchel forecasted the magnitude of Chelsea’s decision to offload the Frenchman.
Thomas Tuchel said: “He is a fantastic player but a player from Inter and with all due respect I will not talk about him. I think with the exit from Olivier Giroud from the type of players we could use, a player used to playing with their backs to goal, whose strength is to keep possession from long balls.”
Though, Lukaku quickly rebuffed Tuchel’s demands and outlined what he’ll bring to Chelsea instead. The miscommunication raises questions regarding the club’s scouting.
Romelu Lukaku said: “I’m quite big, everybody thinks I’m a sort of target man. Just holding up the ball and being a goal poacher. But I’ve never played that way and I hate it. My biggest strength is that I’m dangerous when I’m facing the goal. That’s when I rarely make wrong choices.”
Giroud’s Jay-Jay Okocha-esque goal for France during the international break, which saw him tip-toe through South Africa’s defence before finding the net, encapsulated everything that Tuchel has been demanding from Lukaku. So, in hindsight and in light of Giroud’s lavish goal that took social media by storm, Chelsea might have been better off keeping the Frenchman and spending their summer transfer allowance elsewhere — that’s not ridiculous, that’s not ridiculous to say that.
