It's not that simple, no.
You may recall i've been quite vocal about his poor first touch since he's been here, mainly when putting across a counter argument to the "He's only *insert age here*" comments, stating that's whilst he may be young, and have a very very good goalscoring record for someone that young he still has over 200 first team appearances good clubs at a high level because he started playing first team football at a young age, so it really should not be as bad as it is.
It was an issue when he was in Belgium (believe his then coach commented on it) and it's still and issue now. Of course the most important thing about Romelu Lukaku is that he scores a lot of goals, and i always said that as long as he does that i'd happy with him at Everton even if he never improves other parts of his game.
And i don't think he has. He's has spells of good form where it's looked like he has, but he's inevitably his poor form and gone back to looking awful, ala since March. But it's not a case of a young player being out of form, that happens to all of them. Its a case of a player with something like 6 years first team experience at a high level who happens to be relatively young who on a regular basis fails to be able to control a football, something whihc is one of the very basics that players in their early teens can do.
Therefor, yes, his first touch is an issue (not including his poorness in the air and sometimes lack of workrate, but some players have them, some don't, but they can all control a football without it lauching into orbit).
And the reason why (for me) it is an issue even when he continues to bang in the goals is that football is a team game, every player in that 11 are playing for a team with the aim of winning that game. It doesn't matter who scores, it doesn't matter how many we win by (goal difference asside), it only matters that we win.
And when you have a player who causes our attacks to break down, causes us to lose possesion, and even at times causes us to concede goals because of his poor control it's an issue. Saying that a strikers role is to score goals therefor the aforementioned poor parts of his game don't matter is extremly short sighted really. The better his all round game is, the better Everton will be and the more games we will win. So if he could be better at the basics, as well as the hard part it would benefit us all. It's the disparity of having a player who is so good at the hard part of his job at such a young age but is so poor at the easy basic part.
In 2004/5 we finished 4th with Marcus Bent up front and his (i believe 6 goals), yet we haven't finished that high in 3 seasons of Lukakus far more. Because we were a better team with Bent at that time than we are now with Lukaku. Not that i;d want Bent up front now, i don't.
I just want Lukaku to get better at the basics so Everton get better as a team (and hopefull under a manager who wnats us to defend so Lukakus goals win us games rather than provide 3-4 losses).
