Arteta2391
Player Valuation: £30m
He reminds me of Emile Heskey in his prime
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Baines' left foot
Player Valuation: £90m
How dare one of the best young players in the world want to advance his career. How fking dare he.
Hes lazy though..
State of the clobber on him.
Does he live on the Wirral?
Does he live on the Wirral?
Raymondo077
Player Valuation: £10m
*Jaysus*, will someone please pick me off the floor and direct me in the general direction of the bar.
Nah! I fell again,,,,,,, c,mon Art, why mate???.
Emile Heskey - v- Rom.... I despair, i really, really, do. FFS!!!
That's not on him, it's on the defence behind him
Lukaku carries the least blame out of all of our squad for our current points total
Without him, we'd be down at the bottom of the table right now
Blues Harp
Player Valuation: £60m
Don't know whether this has been posted but........................
Kiwi
Say NO to Ginger Managers
What's his workrate like mate?
zirc
Player Valuation: £40m
Pretty impressive from the new owners to improve our merchandising so quickly.
He will do until we get in a proper striker like Jamie Vardy or Amir Zaki, could have had Michu in on a free as well.
Hantakun
Player Valuation: £1.5m
Article from The Guardian, didn't see this posted in thread as of yet..
(link: http://gu.com/p/4fbfz )
Romelu Lukaku revels in emergence as Everton’s striking talisman
The Belgian forward has bounced back from being dropped a year ago and arrives at Newcastle on Boxing Day as the Premier League’s in-form marksman
Published:23:30 CET fre. 25 december 2015
Evertonians making the 350-mile round trip for a 5.30pm kick-off may disagree but Boxing Day at St James’ Park is a good time and place to gauge how far Romelu Lukaku has come. Almost one year ago he was dropped for a 3-2 defeat at Newcastle United but he returns as the most prolific Premier League striker of 2015, citing the hours spent kicking a ball against a wall and harsh words from his agent as factors in the transformation. Everton must emulate their record signing’s form to reward those trekking to Tyneside.
Lukaku has this season emerged as a centre-forward worthy of Roberto Martínez’s effusive praise, his 16 goals and the all-round improvement validating Everton’s £28m commitment in July 2014. The 22-year-old faces Steve McClaren’s side having scored in seven consecutive league games and has nine goals from his past eight outings in total. The last Everton player to score in nine consecutive games was the legendary William Ralph ‘Dixie’ Dean in 1927. It is a far cry from this time last year when, burdened by personal and fitness issues, the Belgium international was dropped amid a losing streak that invited serious questions about the manager’s position at Goodison Park.
“I remember it very well,” says Lukaku on being demoted for what proved Alan Pardew’s final game as Newcastle manager. “I knew it was coming. I wasn’t playing well and I wasn’t doing a great job for the team so when it came, I thought: ‘OK – when I get the next opportunity, I have to react.’ It happened when I was at Chelsea. I played one game but didn’t take the opportunity and was dropped for the next game. I never reacted. I thought if it happens here as well, there is something wrong. I knew I had to work hard every day and show I am the best striker in the team.
“It was difficult to accept but either you go down all the way and don’t come back or you fight, react and you show the manager you should be in the team. That is what I did. He dropped me for Newcastle, he dropped me for Hull. Then I started against West Ham and scored in the last minute. It was a turning point for me. I played well, I played like I should always have played, and from that point I was always looking forward.”
The 90th-minute equaliser in the FA Cup third round was the first of Lukaku’s 29 goals for Everton this year, his leveller inSaturday’s 3-2 defeat by Leicester Citybreaking Adrian Heath’s record from 1984. Harry Kane is close behind on 27 at club level and, in that context, the Belgian’s declaration at the start of this season he can be better than Sergio Agüero (25 goals for Manchester City in 2015) and Diego Costa (11 for Chelsea in this calender year) does not look misplaced. The striker has assumed greater responsibility at Everton this season. “We are all becoming leaders in the dressing room. It is part of the growing process and I’m enjoying it,” he says. Post-World Cup fitness problems have gone, so too the worries over his father’s health, and a throwback of a summer back home in Brussels also sharpened the striker’s touch.
Lukaku explains: “I am really confident in my quality so, even though I had bad moments last season, I knew I was a goalscorer. The thing is, what are you going to do? I had to analyse what I was doing wrong in my game. I worked on the technical aspects. In the summer, it was mainly just me, playing the ball against a wall. I knew if I could improve the percentage of balls that I lose, hold the play up and lay it off better, I would get more chances.
“So I spent a lot of the summer playing the ball against a wall or going training with my best friend, the Antwerp goalkeeper Nicaise Kudimbana. We’d do an hour and a half in the morning and the same again in the afternoon because the sun was still shining. I had a programme from Everton, too, so I’d work on that in the gym, do some technical stuff, go home and rest, pick Nicaise up and go again. By pre-season I was ready to go and Roberto knew I was ready to do the job. I’m really in a good moment right now.”
Another factor Lukaku identifies for the marked improvement may surprise given its reputation for disruption. It is his agent, Mino Raiola. Lukaku’s decision to switch from his long-standing representative, Christophe Henrotay, to the Italian-born agent of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba and Mario Balotelli this year instantly raised doubts over his Goodison future. Raiola’s insistence that the striker would never have joined Everton had he been his client in 2014, plus that he “will play for a top club like Paris Saint-Germain, the two teams from Manchester, Barcelona or Bayern Munich”, deepened them. The subject will no doubt be revisited next summer should Everton not qualify for the Champions League.
Lukaku admits he was sold on Raiola the moment the Italian-born Dutchman visited the family home in Brussels and left his father, Roger, in total agreement about the correct career path. “My dad played for 10 years in the Belgium Premier League and he always has an answer because he knows the game,” he says. “But when Mino spoke my dad didn’t say anything, he was just: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That is when I knew.”
The former Anderlecht and Chelsea forward adds: “When I was not in a good moment Mino was the one who said the reality. He said stuff to me that no one would say, mean things like: ‘You play like a woman, you play like a girl who has never played the game before. You are too timid.’ Then he would take examples of Zlatan and Bergkamp, all those players, and say: ‘You want to aim for the top? Well you are not playing like a top player’.
“He said stuff that really hurt me and I have my pride. He told me at the end of the day it is all about goals. ‘Goals, goals, goals, goals. If you are a striker, you need to score goals and you need to be professional and do this and that,’ he said. What I am doing now is credit to him also, because he picked my brain when mentally I was at a very low place. It was around the time I was dropped and I had everything over me. Now he is really calm. He doesn’t call me a lot.
“What people also don’t realise is that he has a very good relationship with the manager here as well. In pre-season the manager and Mino had a conversation with me. I had to hear a few things about me in training and what I had to do and from then on it was like unleashing the beast. It was really a great speech the two of them gave me. I love Mino, I love his character. He is not a big talker, more like a brother and a friend. We rarely speak about football, and that is nice, but when I am not doing well the phone will ring and sometimes I don’t want to hear what he has to say. But I’m 22 now and have to face the reality. If it’s not good, it’s not good. If it is good, then keep going because there is always the next game.”
Raiola has had little cause to berate his client in recent months. Everton’s results, however, will be cause of consternation. For all the compliments Martínez’s team have attracted for style this season, they head to Newcastle with only two wins from their last 10 league games. Lukaku describes it as “a process you have to go through with young players who are still learning the game, but you know if you keep working hard and going this way, you will get there in the end”. For the sake of Everton’s fruitful relationship with their leading striker, that process needs to quicken in 2016.
(link: http://gu.com/p/4fbfz )
Romelu Lukaku revels in emergence as Everton’s striking talisman
The Belgian forward has bounced back from being dropped a year ago and arrives at Newcastle on Boxing Day as the Premier League’s in-form marksman
Published:23:30 CET fre. 25 december 2015
Evertonians making the 350-mile round trip for a 5.30pm kick-off may disagree but Boxing Day at St James’ Park is a good time and place to gauge how far Romelu Lukaku has come. Almost one year ago he was dropped for a 3-2 defeat at Newcastle United but he returns as the most prolific Premier League striker of 2015, citing the hours spent kicking a ball against a wall and harsh words from his agent as factors in the transformation. Everton must emulate their record signing’s form to reward those trekking to Tyneside.
Lukaku has this season emerged as a centre-forward worthy of Roberto Martínez’s effusive praise, his 16 goals and the all-round improvement validating Everton’s £28m commitment in July 2014. The 22-year-old faces Steve McClaren’s side having scored in seven consecutive league games and has nine goals from his past eight outings in total. The last Everton player to score in nine consecutive games was the legendary William Ralph ‘Dixie’ Dean in 1927. It is a far cry from this time last year when, burdened by personal and fitness issues, the Belgium international was dropped amid a losing streak that invited serious questions about the manager’s position at Goodison Park.
“I remember it very well,” says Lukaku on being demoted for what proved Alan Pardew’s final game as Newcastle manager. “I knew it was coming. I wasn’t playing well and I wasn’t doing a great job for the team so when it came, I thought: ‘OK – when I get the next opportunity, I have to react.’ It happened when I was at Chelsea. I played one game but didn’t take the opportunity and was dropped for the next game. I never reacted. I thought if it happens here as well, there is something wrong. I knew I had to work hard every day and show I am the best striker in the team.
“It was difficult to accept but either you go down all the way and don’t come back or you fight, react and you show the manager you should be in the team. That is what I did. He dropped me for Newcastle, he dropped me for Hull. Then I started against West Ham and scored in the last minute. It was a turning point for me. I played well, I played like I should always have played, and from that point I was always looking forward.”
The 90th-minute equaliser in the FA Cup third round was the first of Lukaku’s 29 goals for Everton this year, his leveller inSaturday’s 3-2 defeat by Leicester Citybreaking Adrian Heath’s record from 1984. Harry Kane is close behind on 27 at club level and, in that context, the Belgian’s declaration at the start of this season he can be better than Sergio Agüero (25 goals for Manchester City in 2015) and Diego Costa (11 for Chelsea in this calender year) does not look misplaced. The striker has assumed greater responsibility at Everton this season. “We are all becoming leaders in the dressing room. It is part of the growing process and I’m enjoying it,” he says. Post-World Cup fitness problems have gone, so too the worries over his father’s health, and a throwback of a summer back home in Brussels also sharpened the striker’s touch.
Lukaku explains: “I am really confident in my quality so, even though I had bad moments last season, I knew I was a goalscorer. The thing is, what are you going to do? I had to analyse what I was doing wrong in my game. I worked on the technical aspects. In the summer, it was mainly just me, playing the ball against a wall. I knew if I could improve the percentage of balls that I lose, hold the play up and lay it off better, I would get more chances.
“So I spent a lot of the summer playing the ball against a wall or going training with my best friend, the Antwerp goalkeeper Nicaise Kudimbana. We’d do an hour and a half in the morning and the same again in the afternoon because the sun was still shining. I had a programme from Everton, too, so I’d work on that in the gym, do some technical stuff, go home and rest, pick Nicaise up and go again. By pre-season I was ready to go and Roberto knew I was ready to do the job. I’m really in a good moment right now.”
Another factor Lukaku identifies for the marked improvement may surprise given its reputation for disruption. It is his agent, Mino Raiola. Lukaku’s decision to switch from his long-standing representative, Christophe Henrotay, to the Italian-born agent of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba and Mario Balotelli this year instantly raised doubts over his Goodison future. Raiola’s insistence that the striker would never have joined Everton had he been his client in 2014, plus that he “will play for a top club like Paris Saint-Germain, the two teams from Manchester, Barcelona or Bayern Munich”, deepened them. The subject will no doubt be revisited next summer should Everton not qualify for the Champions League.
Lukaku admits he was sold on Raiola the moment the Italian-born Dutchman visited the family home in Brussels and left his father, Roger, in total agreement about the correct career path. “My dad played for 10 years in the Belgium Premier League and he always has an answer because he knows the game,” he says. “But when Mino spoke my dad didn’t say anything, he was just: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That is when I knew.”
The former Anderlecht and Chelsea forward adds: “When I was not in a good moment Mino was the one who said the reality. He said stuff to me that no one would say, mean things like: ‘You play like a woman, you play like a girl who has never played the game before. You are too timid.’ Then he would take examples of Zlatan and Bergkamp, all those players, and say: ‘You want to aim for the top? Well you are not playing like a top player’.
“He said stuff that really hurt me and I have my pride. He told me at the end of the day it is all about goals. ‘Goals, goals, goals, goals. If you are a striker, you need to score goals and you need to be professional and do this and that,’ he said. What I am doing now is credit to him also, because he picked my brain when mentally I was at a very low place. It was around the time I was dropped and I had everything over me. Now he is really calm. He doesn’t call me a lot.
“What people also don’t realise is that he has a very good relationship with the manager here as well. In pre-season the manager and Mino had a conversation with me. I had to hear a few things about me in training and what I had to do and from then on it was like unleashing the beast. It was really a great speech the two of them gave me. I love Mino, I love his character. He is not a big talker, more like a brother and a friend. We rarely speak about football, and that is nice, but when I am not doing well the phone will ring and sometimes I don’t want to hear what he has to say. But I’m 22 now and have to face the reality. If it’s not good, it’s not good. If it is good, then keep going because there is always the next game.”
Raiola has had little cause to berate his client in recent months. Everton’s results, however, will be cause of consternation. For all the compliments Martínez’s team have attracted for style this season, they head to Newcastle with only two wins from their last 10 league games. Lukaku describes it as “a process you have to go through with young players who are still learning the game, but you know if you keep working hard and going this way, you will get there in the end”. For the sake of Everton’s fruitful relationship with their leading striker, that process needs to quicken in 2016.
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