Lukaku back in spotlight as struggles continue at Chelsea

LONDON: A lack of confidence. Injuries to his main chance creators. Tiredness. Defensive opponents.

Romelu Lukaku’s struggles at Chelsea this season can be put down to a whole host of potential factors.

Thomas Tuchel has another possible explanation, too.

“There’s a history of strikers struggling a little bit at Chelsea,” the Chelsea manager said on Monday, somewhat bluntly. “It’s not the easiest place in the world for strikers.”

From Fernando Torres, to Radamel Falcao, to Alvaro Morata, even as far back as Andriy Shevchenko. Many strikers with big reputations — and some with even bigger fees — have come to Stamford Bridge and failed to live up to their billing.

Is Lukaku, signed for a club-record $135 million in the off-season, just the latest example?

It’s too early to make a definitive judgment on Lukaku’s second spell at Chelsea but the first few months back at the club have been difficult for the Belgium international, not least when he was dropped at the start of this year after giving an interview in which he said he was “not happy with the situation” at Chelsea and indicated he didn’t like Tuchel’s style of play.

Another low point came on Saturday, when he touched the ball just seven times during the entirety of the 1-0 win over Crystal Palace. That’s the fewest touches by any English Premier League player in 90 minutes since Opta started collating the data in 2003.

Two days later, Tuchel still appeared to be at a loss to explain it.

“What can I do? I don’t know,” he said. “Now we have to deal with it. The data is out there and the data speaks a certain language so he was not involved in our game. Sometimes it’s like this with the strikers if they struggle a little bit with self-confidence, if they