5 Factors Affecting Romelu Lukaku's Current Barren Spell for Man United

Over the summer, Romelu Lukaku and Alvaro Morata were cast in a footballing remake of Sliding Doors, where the former got off in Manchester and the latter the capital. It could have been so different. With an extra text message here or a persuasive phone call there, it might so easily have been the other way around.

It was inevitable then that Sunday's game between Chelsea and Manchester United would focus on the pair of them. As a spectacle, it did not disappoint. Neither did it as a blood sport, at least for those out for Lukaku.

Both players went into the game without a goal in six matches. Fine starts to life at new clubs were fast evaporating, to leave a mist of doubt as to whether either can match heavyweight contributions from Sergio Aguero and Harry Kane, which title tilts are being built on elsewhere.

Just as Tiemoue Bakayoko bossed his much-feted midfield tussle with the man he replaced—Nemanja Matic—and Antonio Conte his duel with Jose Mourinho that began with a handshake so cold it was used to chill the champagne at full-time, and ended with a snub even icier, Morata's performance and winning goal had even the staunchest Lukaku advocate pausing to ponder which of the two clubs got the best deal. 

The dashing Spaniard, with his hair borrowed from a 50s matinee idol, has seen a good few dismiss him as flaky of late. Largely on the grounds of his own barren spell, a predilection to howl at referees, and an admission he finds London a little too busy to make home forever, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport (via the Evening Standard). The Brexit firing squad had been polishing their rifles in anticipation. It was Lukaku who shot himself in the foot.

On Sunday, Morata was magnificent. He was bull-like from the moment Chris Smalling effectively waved a red flag in his face by ripping his shirt in the first minute. In the second half, he metamorphosed into a matador courtesy of killing United with a header so perfectly placed David De Gea has perhaps never been further away from the ball on the moment it hit the back of his net. Few sights in football are as sumptuous and satisfying as the ball billowing into its designated destination. 

Morata hung in the air for so long three of the four added minutes played at the end were attributed to the time it took for him to land. His feet won't touch the ground for some time yet. The goal marked Cesar Azpilicueta's fifth assist for his compatriot already. It is the type of telepathic partnership Lukaku will feel he is missing in Paul Pogba's continued absence.

For Morata this was a signature performance inked with a flourish. One must hope Lukaku signed his off in pencil.

The international break will be a period of reflection for the Belgian. A self-confessed student of the game, Lukaku will likely spend much of it trying to work out why a magnificent start to his Manchester United career has hit a lull. 

Much of the criticism has been over the top. He's hardly Garry Birtles. Still, there's little doubt a run of nearly 500 minutes without a goal does not sit easily with a £75 million price.

Here we look at some of the factors that may be affecting this blip.

    
Pogba's absence being sorely felt

If Pogba's stock continues to rise at such a steep incline with each week he is missing, the Frenchman may be tempted to miss the rest of the campaign altogether in order to win the Ballon d'Or.

According to Sky Sports data, United have gone from creating 14.8 chances and three big chances per game in the first four matches of the season, when he was fit, to just seven and 1.6 respectively. The fewer chances you create, the fewer goals you score. From an average of three, United have dropped to 1.6 per game. 

Manchester United's midfield currently operates in a different postcode to its attack. And the man whose job it is to link these two foreign states, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, has gone from being the player the club's supporters couldn't understand why Jose Mourinho wouldn't play, to the one they can't understand why he won't drop.

Pogba off the leash playing in front of Matic and Ander Herrera looks as good a combination as United have got. With Mkhitaryan hopelessly out of kilter there is no one to play the forward balls Lukaku loves to run onto. In fairness to him, he's playing with his back to goal more often than not at the minute, as opposed to on the shoulder of the last defender where he's at his best. 

Eden Hazard was everything Mkhitaryan was not. He has a Zen-like capacity to forgive those who treat his legs as a butcher does a joint of meat. It may as well have been Mourinho himself administering the blows at the start of the second half, when United's players, presumably under instruction, looked to nullify Chelsea's main threat by whatever means necessary. They didn't come close.

Right across the midfield, Chelsea's performance demonstrated a rhythm and mix of qualities that rendered United's prosaic to the point of being pedestrian in comparison. In Cesc Fabregas, Chelsea have a player Lukaku would love to play with. United have no one of his ilk, though Juan Mata's failure to even make the bench was hardly a ringing endorsement of the neatest footballer at the club.

When Manchester City wanted to see the game out against Arsenal earlier in the day they called Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan off the bench. Both would have walked into that United team. 

Without Pogba there is no one to get beyond United's forwards either. As pointed out by football tactics expert Michael Cox, on Twitter, Bakayoko showed he has the lungs if not quite the feet to carry off the "third-man run" Conte so loves when he plays two up front.

Time and time again, Bakayoko surged beyond Morata, with his dart into the box from left to right pulling Smalling out of the middle to create the space for the Spaniard to bag as stunning a header as will be scored all season.

In comparison, Lukaku and Rashford were hopelessly isolated. Even more so when they pulled wide in an attempt to get into a game that was passing both of them by. At some points, there was such a distance between them there was talk of a temporary tube stop being erected. For all the babble of electric chemistry between them, this is a partnership that needs substantial work. 

            
Not enough time spent in the penalty box

A natural goalscorer is like a cheerful dog that religiously waits by the table for scraps. However many times they are shooed away, something inherent within makes them come back for more. More often than not, it's a life of disappointment, but when something edible drops, there is no better place to be to take advantage.

In a metaphorical, not literal, sense, Gary Lineker finished his career resembling an obese St. Bernard. In these past seven matches, Lukaku has been more a whippet on a diet.

In his first eight games for United, he averaged 5.9 touches in the opposition box per game. On Sunday he failed to register a single touch in Chelsea's area. For Mourinho to say it doesn't concern him is illogical nonsense. It's like a pastry chef completing a shift without having come into contact with flour. 

Of the 65 goals Lukaku scored for Everton, three were from outside of the box. All his 11 goals for United thus far have been bagged in the box. It hardly requires a doctorate in spatial awareness to surmise that if he wants to get back on the goal trail, it makes sense to spend considerably more time closer to the opposition's area.

Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer urged Lukaku to be more selfish (via the MailOnline): "Width of the 18-yard box, that's what he's got to think about. He isn't going to score by running into corners.

"Let the people create the chances for you. He's a goalscorer, and he's getting judged on scoring goals."

He's right. For all the talk of Morata being the better footballer of the two, when Lukaku's scoring no one really cares. In that respect, he's a perfect Mourinho player. Aesthetics can be left to the poets. Goals trump disdain for trampoline touches every time.

In a perverse way, he'd be better adopting the slovenly work rate that in the 2015/16 campaign saw him crowned last among the 503 outfield players in the Premier League for distance covered per 90 minutes, according to data researched by Sky Sports' Adam Bate. There were substitutes who never came on who covered more miles on an average matchday.

Mourinho won't give a solitary dime about what he does outside of the box, given last season he scored 24 times when stationed in it. When Lukaku's scoring he'd get away with only leaving the opposition's box once a game, to walk to the other end at halftime.

His manager was in no mood to talk numbers post-match. That is odd given he was so keen to talk about them before the game, when he was pronouncing greatness on any manager who had won 25 trophies, which coincidently happens to be the number in his vast cabinet.

"I'm not reading stats; I'm reading the game," he said, per The Times' Matt Dickinson. 

"From the bench, it's a different perspective, not mathematical. He had a chance with a good shot, which the goalkeeper saved. I'm happy, and I don't want to look at the stats."

The concern is less Lukaku missing chances than failing to get them. It's nothing like when Fernando Torres went on a 24-match drought for Chelsea. He missed so many chances that by the end when he was going through on goal, keepers would pull up a couch for him to lie back on so they could talk through his anxiety issues when in goalscoring positions. Then he'd shank it wide.

Lukaku should have scored at Anfield against Liverpool and could have against Spurs at Old Trafford, but he's currently dining on far more greasy spoon than Michelin star.

Nonetheless, at £75 million, can United expect Lukaku to influence games when they're not playing well? No one was better in the league at disguising average performances with a goal than Zlatan Ibrahimovic last season.

        
Too much time talking and listening to the media

In fairness, Lukaku picked a good week to ask his critics not to judge him as the finished article. Alternatively, they could judge him as the ninth-most expensive player in the history of the sport instead. Whichever works for you, Romelu?

No doubt Sky Sports' Super Sunday producers were delighted when Gary Neville launched into a pre-match diatribe over how Lukaku and Mourinho need to stop complaining about criticism as it makes them look weak, having just shown an interview the Belgian had done with Thierry Henry in which he was salty about the stick he has taken recently.

"His performances against Tottenham and Liverpool were not good enough. And why is everybody at that club talking about critics and pundits?," Neville said pre-match (via Metro). 

"Not once did I do that at United. Why are they going on about it? Stop it—you’re making yourself look weak. Concentrate on your job and focus on that."

He's a good talker, Lukaku, erudite with a big personality to boot. It's testimony to his self-confidence that he's happy to discuss the nuances of his game with genuine openness when in a run of indifferent form. However, in terms of setting himself up for a fall, ahead of what was always going to be a huge game for him, perhaps he should have twigged when Henry asked him to wear a crash helmet and erected a giant net under his chair.

Though he's no delicate flower, there's little doubt Lukaku's confidence will be at a low ebb. That is what makes Mourinho's manufacturing of a potential issue between player and supporters perplexing to the point of being plain odd.

Creating a siege mentality at a football club is hardly a new thing. Mourinho did it to great success at Chelsea. But it's usually done as a collective: us versus them. With Lukaku, it's more: them and you. Mourinho is behaving like a jealous husband who doesn't want his wife to have friends of her own, so drives a wedge between them that doesn't exist.

Asked by MUTV about Lukaku's assist for Anthony Martial's winner against Tottenham Hotspur, he replied unprompted (via the Guardian): "I would like the supporters to explain to me why they don't support him so much, because he gives everything, and I think it is not fair when scoring the goal or not scoring the goal [he] makes the whole difference."

It's an irritation he's come back to since. United supporters seem as puzzled by it all as, presumably, Lukaku is.

      
Second-worst goalless run of his career

Eleven goals in 17 starts is, by anyone's standards, a remarkable introduction to life at a new club. For all the noise, this is not a personal crisis. Lukaku should not be rocking himself to sleep. However, it will not be lost on a footballing scholar, whose specialist subject is himself, that a run of seven matches without a goal represents the second-worst barren spell of his career.

He is often referred to as a streaky striker, but last season at Everton, he never went more than four games without registering. The worst spell of his career arrived in the one before that, 2015/16, when he went on a 10-game run without a goal that coincidently stretched from his brace in the FA Cup against Chelsea on March 12, right until the end the season. It even overlapped into the first three matches of last season, too.

In the 2014/15 campaign, his worst run was six matches, with five games the nadir in the single season he spent with West Bromwich Albion in 2013/14.

Comfort can be sought in history. The rest of Lukaku's career suggests after the famine comes the feast. He would do well to heed the words Ruud van Nistelrooy offered to Gonzalo Higuain when he was going through a similar lean spell. It's a story Cristiano Ronaldo tells, too, relating to a run of over 16 months without a goal for Portugal earlier in his career.

"He told me something during a period in which I didn't score. And it's true. You try, but it doesn't come out," Higuain told Corriere della Sera (via Eurosport).  

"And when it comes out, it all does at once. It's like ketchup. It's a beautiful anecdote."

             
Flat-track-bully digs weighing heavy?

Since joining Chelsea from Anderlecht in 2011, Lukaku has scored 92 Premier League goals against 30 different Premier League clubs.

Only 15 of those goals have come in 60 games against the "big six" (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur). Sunday's blank took him to seven matches and counting without scoring against former club Chelsea. Of his 25 Premier League goals for Everton last season, 21 were against clubs that finished outside of the top seven.

Quite justifiably he defends his record by citing how in his career he has played at clubs that have finished eighth, fifth, 11th, 11th and seventh during his time in England.

When he joined United in the summer, he had more Premier League goals (85) than any of Ronaldo (84), Kane (78), Eric Cantona (70) or Luis Suarez (69). Only Aguero over the past five seasons has scored more league goals. For all the criticism, he's no mug.

Despite all that, until he starts to regularly do the business against fellow heavyweights, talk of him being a flat-track bully will forever be background noise. Footballing tinnitus that will drive him to despair until he finds peace with it.

His complete record against the top six now reads five goals in 12 games against Liverpool; four in 10 against Manchester City; three in 11 against Manchester United; two in 11 against Arsenal; one in nine against Tottenham; zero in seven against Chelsea.

It is less a lack of goals against Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea this season that have been chastised than his almost-anonymous all-round performances in each of them. An assist for Martial's winner against Spurs should be duly noted and praised, but even in accepting the old Winston Churchill line about statistics, "I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself," it would take his mother to draw too many positives from how he's performed in United's three biggest league games to date.

While touch stats can be misleading, there's a definite pattern emerging. Of the 22 players that started on Sunday, none had fewer than Lukakau's 24 touches, with the Belgian also bottom of the pile against Tottenham (38)—Rashford also had 38 touches but was substituted after 69 minutes. It was the same against Liverpool, where he recorded a season-low 22 touches. Over the three matches, Lukaku touched the ball 84 times. De Gea, 129.

For further context, Fabregas had 94 touches in 78 minutes on Sunday before being replaced, Morata 51. Lively ball boys will boast better numbers than Lukaku.

In fairness, it's not just Lukaku with a questionable record against the top six. In 10 away games against perceived closest rivals over the past 18 months, encompassing stints as boss of both Chelsea and United, Mourinho's teams have drawn five and lost as many. The most damning statistic is that they have managed just a solitary goal in 900 minutes of football. For one of the most expensively assembled squads in the history of the game to be so pathetically pallid away from home, is nothing short of unacceptable.

If it just doesn't change quickly, for both men, dreams of a Premier League title and a Golden Boot could be over before they began. 

All stats provided by either WhoScored.com or the official Premier League website unless where otherwise stated