'Nonsensical!' Frank Sinclair slams Thomas Tuchel's Romelu Lukaku snub

Former Chelsea defender Frank Sinclair slammed Thomas Tuchel’s decision to snub Romelu Lukaku against Everton and fears his old club have a ‘massive’ problem on their hands.

Tuchel’s side delivered another below-par display on Sunday as The Toffees boosted their survival hopes with a hard fought 1-0 victory over the FA Cup finalists.

A mistake from Cesar Azpilicueta gifted Richarlison the only goal of the contest early in the second half and, although it required some inspired goalkeeping from Jordan Pickford, Chelsea were unable to find an equaliser.

With his side chasing an equaliser Tuchel resisted the temptation to introduce the club’s record signing, and instead brought on wide players Hakim Ziyech and Christian Pulisic with 23 minutes remaining.

Lukaku cut a forlorn figure on the bench and Sincalir feels it’s now inevitable the 28-year-old, who cost £97million little under 12 months ago, will depart Stamford Bridge come the summer.

Sinclair told Stadium Astro: ‘Regarding Romelu Lukaku there’s a masssive problem there. For me, with ten minutes to go in a game that you need a goal and you’ve got a player who has scored so many goals and so many good feelings at this football club, for me it was nonsensical not to bring him on and give him 10 or 15 minutes to try and change the game and get something out of it.

‘Especially when you are getting crosses in the box at will really towards the end when you’re chasing the game. To leave him on the bench I was quite surprised with.

‘They’ve obviously put a lot money into bringing him back to the football club again but I don’t like the body language there was one performance in particular a few weeks ago that he got a lot of stick about just his overall effort and