"Like a fish out of water" – Journalist drops shock verdict on Chelsea star

Journalist Paul Brown reckons that Romelu Lukaku has looked like a “fish out of water” playing for Chelsea recently.

The £90m-rated striker returned to Stamford Bridge from Inter Milan last summer but has found the going tough in his second spell at the club.

His two goals in the Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi aside, which saw Thomas Tuchel’s side claim silverware at the first time of asking this season, it’s been a forgetful campaign for the striker.

Lukaku scored an impressive 64 goals during his two years in Serie A, netting at least 20 league goal in each of those seasons.

But heading into the business end, Lukaku has just five Premier League goals to his name, and three of those came in his first three outings.

Despite his questionable goal return, Thomas Tuchel has persisted with Lukaku, starting him in five of Chelsea’s last six top-flight fixtures. But he was dropped for the recent Champions League last 16 tie with Lille, three days after he had up just seven touches against Crystal Palace, which was the fewest by any player since Opta started recording stats.

It therefore doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Lukaku has been Chelsea’s 16th-best player this season, with an average WhoScored rating of 6.87.

He told GIVEMESPORT: “You have to feed him in the right areas and when you’re doing that, he can try as much as he likes, but he just looks like a fish out of water at the moment.”

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There will surely become a time when Tuchel loses patience with the frontman.

He might have needed a few weeks to adapt to life back in the Premier League, but we’re seven months down the line and he’s shown little in the way of justifying the £97.5m that Chelsea paid