Tuchel aware of, already working on the ‘Lukaku problem’

Romelu Lukaku scored 15 minutes into his “second debut” for Chelsea, the first of four goals he’d score in his first four games after returning as the prodigal son this summer. But after four in the first four, he has zero in the next four. More concerningly, Chelsea’s attacking play has been plumbing new depths in the last couple games, producing just one (1) shot on target (and zero goals) across 180 minutes of football.

Our stodgy attacking play would make Paul Hollywood very unhappy as well, let alone those with much greater emotional or professional investment in our results.

Some of the analysis has pointed fingers at Lukaku, while some more pointed analysis focused on our usage of him, and his involvement (or lack thereof) in our gameplans. Lukaku’s previous head coach, and former Chelsea boss, Antonio Conte provided plenty of headline fodder for example with his take on Italian TV.

As we might have surmised, Tuchel is also well aware of our substandard play and suboptimal usage of Lukaku, and he’s assured that he is indeed working on it — where “it” presumably means finding a solution to get Lukaku plenty of goals and, in turn, get us plenty of wins.

“I don’t feel offended [...] I saw [Conte] talking about us and I saw all the pictures between Romelu and our players from the Tottenham game. They were talking about the link-up play from Romelu, and how strong he is and how much he scored so they were praising him.

“I can see it but it is not a Romelu Lukaku problem. The other teams have changed their structure to close down Romelu but there are solutions to this. We are on it.”

-Thomas Tuchel; source: Metro

So, there ya have it. No need to fear, Tinker Tailor Tactics Tommy is on the case! (That may sound snarky, but it’s also a bit reverential.)