Lukaku is not at the races, that's pretty clear. It's unfair to just leave it at that though.
In the argument against him, his touch and awareness are generally poor and he's not aggressive enough. This is a problem because I'm not sure any of this can really be coached into him now.
In his defence, he is quick and he's a fantastic finisher. Will he ever be worth £28m? I don't know, but on his game he's a real asset.
The mitigating circumstances then come into play - He was at the World Cup and had a very disjointed pre-season. Martinez admitted he wasn't fit, but he started the first game of the season and has been in the team ever since because we've had injuries. On top of that, he picked up a foot injury early on and has had to play with that which has visibly affected him, particularly in the earlier games. To add to that, we've not exactly been firing on all cylinders as a side either - lots of our attacking players who would be responsible for creating space and chances for Lukaku have either been injured or badly out of form themselves. He's scored a couple of lovely goals, but if we're all expecting him to become Drogba anytime soon, we'll all be very disappointed - let's be honest, Mourinho would have kept him if that was the case. He has weaker areas of his game, but if we can get him properly fit and surrounded by players creating space and chances for him, he'll score goals. He's done it at every level and wherever he has played in his career and he did it for us last season too. There's no reason to think he won't continue, but you have to temper expectations. Just because we paid £28m for him doesn't mean we're going to see a different player than we saw last season. We won't and there were times last season where his lack of control and being bullied off the ball had me fuming, it'll happen a lot this season too.
