People should be arsed though, as when he doesn't turn up - which is often - then the entire team suffers.
At least with a less talented goalscorer but more able footballer you can have a degree of consistency with how the team plays as a whole. With Lukaku, you never do, because you don't know whether he's going to absolutely demolish a team or go on a ten game run of doing next to nothing.
For teams, I prefer long term performances and mentality over one-off wins - hence why I can genuinely say I wouldn't have been impressed with three points today because of the manner we set out to do it; you don't win titles being that negative for that long. It's the same with Lukaku - long term performances vastly outweigh pure goal output, because performance effects the effectiveness of the 9 other outfield players on the pitch.
And they are arsed when he doesn't show up. Scoring goals is seen as showing up, despite what he accomplishes or produces for the rest of the match.Wrightly or wrongly that's how he's judged. He's performing a specific role, up top on his own.
Like how keepers are judged by how few they concede, Lukaku as a lone striker is judged mainly on how many he's scoring.I definitely agree he could be a more complete player.
It is funny going back through the vaults of this thread as some of us were unsure he was worth the money rumored after the initial loan season because his all-around play was pretty terrible. I think the fact that he's been scoring goals consistently more than anyone Evertonians have seen since the false dawns of 6 months of Jelavic, and a year of The Yak, has bought him a lot of good will.
Some days he does my head in, he can be detrimental to the team performance at times. Some of those times he might even pop up with a goal despite everything bouncing off of him for 89 minutes. He scores goals though and we waited a long time for someone who could do that. We've tried a lot of systems now to get the most out of Lukaku as a player because he is a real goal threat and goals are good. We have to change the systems to get the most out of Lukaku, because he is limited in how he can affect the game. He is poor at winning the ball in the air with his back to goal, despite being a physical match for most center backs in the league. His touch and hold up play, while they've improved since his early loan spell, still see him turning over the ball. This seems to happen no matter how much support he gets, whether it be another striker or Ross playing off of him. He's not playing passes to play other players through either, and strikers are greedy by nature. His dribbling is actually pretty decent despite his sometimes awful touch. Can't knock him for scoring consistently though.
Koeman's negative, direct style is an attempt to get him more chances without risking the defensive frailties exposed by over-committing players forward to support him. Yeah, we're not playing pretty football. It is effective at the moment and I think it reflects Koeman's desire to maximize the ability of Lukaku to get us up the league an support his own ambitions in a post-Lukaku world. He's top goal scorer and we're in 7th at the moment, we haven't improved our league performance since his loan and he's improved as a player so if he wants to go and no amount of money we're offering is going to keep him here then so be it. We have a lot of positions to fill with quality players in the summer, and with Europa League to come into the schedule Koeman will have the chance to shape the squad with more of his personnel. From what we've seen of Koeman he'll adapt the tactics and formation to reflect the players on the pitch.
Anyone who thought we were keeping Lukaku here beyond this contract is far more optimistic than I am. He was always clear about using us as a stepping stone. I'm not bothered about him going too much because it was always going to happen and we're coming out of it with a massive profit no matter what happens. He's been a bright spark during two dull Martinez years, and really is the best thing Martinez did for us.
