Are Chelsea better without Lukaku?

2 March 20222 March 2022 Nikesh Sharma

Romelu Lukaku, the one destined to be the Drogba’s successor doesn’t seem to having a good time in England. He has been struggling with poor form, brain dead interviews and has lost the trust of the fans. What seemed like a recipe for success in the Premier League (remember Chelsea won the UCL?), has now turned into a big weight at the back of the Chelsea team.

Chelsea have been starting without Lukaku for the past couple of games and in those games, their front three have played better than they did with Lukaku, so is it now time to drop Lukaku and go with last year’s team?

Chelsea gamepay without Lukaku

Chelsea are more free-flowing without a target man up front. When Havertz, Pulisic and Mount play together there isn’t a definitive target man at the front asking for the ball. Any of the front three could move ahead with the ball and score. This creates a rather beautiful football which is also confusing for the opposition defenders.

In the 2020/21 season the trio of Havertz, Mount and Pulisic scored 24 goals and 21 assists in 45 odd games they played together. This season however Lukaku is tasked with scoring goals and hence others don’t shoot much and don’t score as any. Lukaku’s stats show that he has been performing way worse than what was expected of him.

Without Lukaku Chelsea play like Barcelona but with him, they play like Juventus. There is a stark contrast between the playing styles of both these teams. One plays a beautiful passing game whereas the other plays industrious football.

Chelsea gameplay with Lukaku

Chelsea play a more of a traditional style of football when playing with Lukaku, in the sense that the whole team moves the ball forward and gives it to the big target man at the front to score. At Chelsea however, this means the chance is floundered.

Having a target man at the front is also beneficial for opposition defenders as they know which player to mark the most. Lukaku has complained of not getting service which has prompted Chelsea to offer more balls to him. This means other attackers have less chance on the ball hence less opportunity to shoot and score.

This is evident in Chelsea’s goals this season. Most goals were being scored by our full-back Reece James and Ben Chilwell earlier this season before they both got injured. Lukaku on the other hand has been very wasteful at the front with comparisons making him even far worse than Giroud.

On paper, Chelsea should have become stronger with a $90 million player added to the Champions League winning squad. It has however resulted in

Conclusion

Despite losing to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup, Chelsea were the better team. They scored multiple goals but all of them were offside. This team needs to be taught the simple process of remaining onside when the ball is played.

Almost every Chelsea goal has an offside goal which speaks volumes of where things are going wrong for this team. Chelsea need to give up on trying to integrate Lukaku with the team, also since he does not want to play with Chelsea but Milan.

They need to go back to their last year’s formation and play like they did last year. Players like Mendy, Havertz, Reece James, Chilwell, Pulisic, Chalobah and Alonso have seen massive improvement recently and Kante, Jorginho, Silva, Christensen and Azpilicueta are still some of the very best at their position. There is till time to realise that what Chelsea had was already enough to win them silverware.