Cottee: Lukaku needs to be more selfish

Lukaku needs to be up the centre, I’ve thought that all along.

We aren't using his strengths, we aren't giving him decent service and we are playing him out of position. While this continues to happen, I won't jump on the 'Lukaku haters' bandwagon.

In many ways he has a similar body language to Yakubu, the only difference is the Yak would score the tap-ins in the 6-yard box whereas Rom has hardly featured in that area so far this season.

I couldn't believe when I saw that chart on Match of the Day where Lukaku has spent most of the last two games, hardly a single touch has been in the middle of the pitch and virtually none in the penalty box.

We just can't keep blaming a lack of service. There is nothing stopping Lukaku moving central and making a beeline for the box when we are attacking but he just lacks the hunger at the moment.

I very much doubt that Martinez is instructing Lukaku to NEVER move central during the match, sure he begins deployed out wide but he is not meant to neglect the most important duties which are being a striker, the target man, the number 9.

It's all been a damp squib so far, in many ways it feels like the season hasn't even really started. Let's get this pointless International break out the way and hope that we see a totally different mentality from quite a few of them.

I remember he divided fans' opinions back then (some things never change eh?) and when we sold him, I remember the amazed reaction of some in the pub when I said he'd finished on 99 goals for us. Trouble was, most were almost "meaningless" – the fourth in a comfortable win, or a hat-trick in a Zenith Data Systems Cup game, or (towards the end) a consolation in a match we'd been given a hiding in.

How can you really score 99 "meaningless" goals for Everton Football Club? If you mean he never scored a winner at Anfield or a Cup Final then frankly he’s in pretty good company with the vast majority who have played for us. 99 goals is an achievement worth remembering more fondly.

Nobody is bashing Lukaku so much, as wanting more from him, which we are entitled to. If the manager is instructing him to play out wide then he’s going the fucking same way as Moyes undoubtedly, Moyes did it with strikers so often because he never had reliable wingers; Martinez does have so why he’s fucking around, who knows?

I can’t keep buying into this fact though that Lukaku is being marked hence why it’s Naismith shining and not the Belgian himself. Come on... do you think the likes of Suarez, Costa, and all other truly top class strikers could turn to their managers and say "He’s pinching all my goals, gaffer, coz I’m being marked"?

Fuck me.

One of his biggest faults is he anticipates to the negative. I can't remember what game it was but there was a 50/50 ball Baines went for outside the box, he won it and looked for Lukaku who was still nowhere.... Why? Because he anticipated that Baines would lose the ball. Good strikers like Ratboy (sorry) always anticipate that a situation like that is going to be dangerous! Suarez was an expert at it!... among other things!

His new pal Eto'o should be playing with him all the time. We need our wingers back pronto, The service from midfield has been awful this season so far.

McGeady is one of the worst offenders. Overrated. Lukaku should be running at defences and making them shit themselves.

Me and my Dad sat at the 3-2 win against Swansea back in March; Rom was displaying the same kind of poor play that he is at present. We both agreed on the day that Wilfred Bony was the better all-round player and one we would prefer. Please don't think I am starting a debate that we should have signed Bony; I am elaborating that my concerns about Lukaku started at the turn of the year.

If this young man is going to fulfill anywhere near his potential then he needs to double his workrate and make things happen for himself and the team. Just look at Diego Costa as the prime example in the 6-3 game only a few weeks ago: forget the service, technical ability, finishing etc of the league's in-form striker. The man's workrate was first class.

Even the limited Denis Stracqualursi – although he once slide tackled with his face – worked his socks off for Everton and I will always love him for that. The standing ovation he got against Chelsea will always live in my memory. Pure appreciation.

Come on, Big Rom; if you are going to fulfill your undoubted potential, then you need to get the fire in the belly and start putting a shift in.

Whatever or however is blamed on these threads, it falls back on one man... Roberto Martinez!

The honeymoon period is now over; a decent start last season and being backed fully in the transfer market has now seen us playing like Wigan.

He needs to prove he can evolve this team in different systems and more importantly fire up individuals. Every comment about his team is "awesome, amazing, outstanding" when unfortunately we can all see they have been anything but for the whole of pre-season right up to our last game!!

We keep saying the service is shit but look at the Chelsea game? We created chance after chance.

Lukaku has done three good things this season for me. The two good well-taken goals he's scored and the set up for Naismith against Arsenal. That needs to be the level Lukaku reaches on a consistent weekly basis.

He has ambitions to be a world class player, which you cannot knock him for. I don't believe he will become one.

He does work hard, but I think resents having to play on the wing. The concentration levels are high in the modern game, particularly for a striker. The opportunities are usually very fleeting. He has shown ability in this area, scoring goals late in the game, for example.

He has ability to score goals. He had no control over the transfer fee, so should not be judged on this basis. He has something to offer the team, as long as he is used in the right way. He will never be in the Alan Shearer, or Roy Vernon mould of strikers, but can be an important cog in the machine.

Countless times we've had the ball in midfield in transition and he's screaming for it upfront. When Barkley plays, Barkley beats his man and runs. Lukaku then has his favoured two-on-two and causes havoc.

In similar situations this season. Barry or McCarthy ignore the forward ball to go backwards. Or Naismith gets it in the Barkley position and drops it off backwards again. Lukaku gets frustrated, starts floating wide because the full backs seem to be the only people who pass forward in our team.

Remember that season Gibson would just get his head up and float one over the top for Jelavic? How many would Rom get if we varied our play with a quick ball now and then.

Again Everton buy strikers and don't play to their strengths.

We never play with two up front in today's game and I am sure that we would get more out of Rom if he had Eto'o or Kone playing with him.

Unfortunately our team defensively and creatively are a bit lacking so it is difficult for us to start with two up front. Our two defensive midfielders are not creative and do not chip in with goals often enough. They are both destructive rather than creative and play to stop opposing sides rather than attack them.

Actually our cleverest midfield player is still Osman and he is nowadays unable to play 90 minutes at full throttle. We need Barkley to step up to the plate and fulfil his potential. He could well be our spark to get more out of Rom and also start scoring himself.

Naismith is wholehearted and is having his best period since he joined us but he cannot do everything without support. Our biggest problem is the lack of quality in depth and injuries hurt us more than other teams who have more money to spend and more squad quality.

We are at a stage of the season I feared when I saw us not sign the number of players we needed. All we have done is replace players we lost and now the usual injury problems all teams suffer from are biting us hard.

We have had nothing from Kone so far and now with Mirallas, Barkley, Stones etc to add to the casualty list, we are looking pretty poor. The bench is always the barometer of a team's strength and ours is pretty sparse.

He is still so young and we will give him the time he needs but we really need him straight after the international break to come back as the beast we know he is — not this watered down winger.

If it is Martinez stopping him play his natural game then he needs shooting, he had one excellent game against Arsenal as a wide forward but that is not his position and not what we spent £28M on. Maybe he needs the dreadlocks back!!! or maybe Martinez needs to remind him just how absolutely terrifying he can be at his best.

That being said, I remember as far back as early last season when Shearer was saying he was a great striker, but he needed to make more runs from the centre of the park because he tended to make his runs on goal via the channels.

Maybe Roberto's seen this and decided put him out on the wings because it's something that he does naturally. However If he's ever going to reach the level of Costa, who he keeps getting compared to unfairly IMO by many on here, he'll need to look at this.

Perhaps he is or could be better used as a substitute, at least temporarily anyway. Maybe that's the kick up the backside needed. Martinez could go with Naismith and Eto'o and promote one of Chris Long or McAleny to the first team setup and try something different.

After all we have been banging the drum about McAleny for three years. He's either going to make it soon or he's leaving the same way Vellios did.

He will come good but it will take time and at the moment the whole team is not performing like they were last season.

Yes, he played a stormer against Arsenal last season on the right, that was a surprise tactic. Teams are wise to it now and have nullified any advantage we may have had.

Get him in the middle and boss the defenders.

This is a mistake.

His strengths are running onto a ball and using his physique to burst past defenders, unleashing a really powerful, accurate strike at goal. By all means work on ball control etc. but not at the expense of current goals.

As for this: "Moyes did it with strikers so often because he never had reliable wingers, Martinez does have so why he's fucking around, who knows."

Name one winger at the club who can be classed as 'consistent'? Mirallas is probably the nearest and his middle name is a toss up between hit and miss. Who else? Pienaar? Out injured more often than not these days but as likely to be infuriating as inspiring when he is on the pitch. McGeady? One or two good things a game before spending the rest of the time running about looking like he's got his pants caught round his ankles? Atsu, who was pulled off at half-time before he died of embarrassment?

He hasn't caught fire yet but our main problem overall this season has been our defending and not goals scored – can't really blame the centre forward for that. We continually play two holding midfielders and yet still ship goals – can't even blame it on two full-backs bombing forward given Coleman's been out for a few weeks now. Whatever the tactics are, they're not working, for whatever reason. Time to try something a bit different, methinks.

The defence needs to sort itself out and, on the attacking side, we need to start properly mixing it up. Possession football is all good and well but if that's the only thing you do, very slowly, sideways and backwards, then you're not going to get anywhere.

Lukaku is big, has pace and loves to run onto passes/crosses – if we break faster and more direct every now and again, he'll have a better chance than our current super slow build-up play on the half-way line, regardless of whether he starts in the middle or out wide.

For me, we've been really poor so far because something is simply not right with the midfield or Howard. The midfield's neither protecting the defence properly nor creating enough going forward – it needs to be doing at least one of these right... otherwise, we've no chance.

Added to this is of course the diabolitcal form that Howard's in. I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt but thought I'd look up the stats. It doesn't admittedly say everything but looking at the first few league games:

Leicester 3 shots on target, 2 goals
Arsenal, 3 shots on target, 2 goals
Chelsea, 8 shots on target, 6 goals (!)
West Brom, 3 shots on target, 0 goals
Palace, 3 shots on target, 3 goals (!)
RS, 8 shots on target, 1 goal
Man Utd, 4 shots on target 2, goals

So in 7 league games, the oppos had 32 shots on target and scored 16 times – a strike rate of 50%! Now the keeper may not have had a chance for some but that is a pretty dire statistic. He seems to have played well in only 2 out of 7 league games going by saves – and a shaky keeper always means a shaky defence.

It's a tough one as Robles seems to be gash so we don't seem to have much choice. Until Timmy decides its World Cup Timmy time, we're not looking great at the back. RM needs to bring Timmy's confidence back to 'phenomenal' levels again...

Is it working enough to persist with it? Not in my opinion, but I can see why the manager is asking him to do it for the time being.

The fact the player himself is prepared to do it is a plus point for me. It's alright saying 'they play where they're told', but strikers are usually the most egotistical and selfish players in the team. If he's ready to forfeit personal glory and put a shift in where the manager asks him to, without getting a titty lip on about it and moaning about his own game suffering as a result, then should he really be coming in for all the flak when it proves to be less than effective?

Increase the pace of our passing, stop turning back with the ball and allowing every opposition defender to reassemble in front of you, hit an early ball over the top now and again for him to run on to, counter attack at pace. Easier said than done but all things that will enable Lukaku to come alive again.

Once Barkley is back then I expect Lukaku to be the biggest beneficiary of what he brings to the side, and I'll back him right now to get at least 15 goals again this season.

Blaming individual players is totally unfair and whilst we all have our opinions on who the whipping boys are we surely have to admit that most of the time when things go wrong it’s not just one player we should look at. So far this season, RM has not been able to get the team to play solidly as a unit hence the flow of goals the wrong way. However, they have been able to score goals despite not playing well.

The biggest problem I have seen is the sloppy passing and silly giveaways that are breaking down the offensive forays. This in itself promotes confidence in the opposition ranks when they keep getting the ball back cheaply.

This could be that some players just don’t have the confidence to hold the ball longer or they are just not good enough. It could be a mixture of both deficiencies. One can only hope this aspect of Everton improves very soon.

Yes, Lukaku also is guilty of this sometimes but he always has a man on his back and the pass is either played too quickly or too hard and this is why he plays out wide sometimes where he may get an extra yard of space.

I believe when Barkley comes back, things will improve – especially as Besic is gradually finding his feet also.

Bleeding sick of these international breaks, I am... and I bet most Premier League managers are too – none more than our own Roberto.

There are too many games in these qualifiers and too many totally pointless matches, mis-matches where there can only be one obvious outcome. It's becoming more like the Eurovision song contest rather than the European Championship football qualifiers.

Let's just hope the Everton injury jinx doesn't end up striking again during this next week.

As pointed out earlier, he'd go a stretch of seven-eight games without a goal, then net a hat trick in a hammering of a lower league team in a cup that no longer exists, before going straight back to being anonymous again.

£2.3 m was a massive, massive, sum back then. A sum in retrospect the club really couldn't afford to be spending at that stage. A record British transfer fee, spent on a guy we were told was Gary Lineker Mk 2, and after the most perfect start a striker could possibly have, he never even set about repaying the faith Colin Harvey put in him.

Sure, he played in a piss poor team throughout his time at the club, but he never bust a lung in a blue shirt, ever. He sulked and complained to the press when he was dropped, and cared more about seeing his name on the scoresheet than the fact that score wasn't in Everton's favour.

Remember how everyone took to Mike Newell when he hit the ground running? He put in the effort that many had been screaming out for Cottee to show even a modicum of. Shame old Mike suffered some kind of mental block after banging in goal number nine...

Cottee also had the misfortune to sport really shit hair that looked like it belonged on some speccy gadge from Grange Hill – and he was made to wear the meffiest Everton kits ever. White and silver stripes, anyone? No? What about salmon and black?? Yellow with a big blue zigzag across the chest? Blue with white splatters all over like you just walked under a Seagull shitstorm?!?

The lad I go the game with used to wear all those kits when we were kids and his idol at the time was, indeed, Tony Cottee... or TC as he affectionately called him. Absolutely fucking loved the bones of him, he did.

Everyone has their personal favourites, I guess. Cottee was nowhere near my list of late eighties/early nighties idols.

Still, it was nice to see him make a comeback playing 'Maaaatt Daaaaammon' in 'Team America' though.

Lukaku is great running at players or running playing facing the goal. Eto'o can do that job so I don't understand why he wasn't given a game on Saturday.

Another name that also springs to mind is Jelavic. Despite the goals drying up, he could play with his back to goal and always worked hard.

He's either been abducted by aliens and they still haven't worked out if there's any point to bringing him back... or he's been having so much for at Luna Park on Coney (Kone) Island he never wants to come home.

It's no wonder the lad can't get on the pitch!

We're patched together right now and Roberto's fielding the team best he can.

Some fans take to the workhorse type more, of recent years the likes of Marcus Bent, who would run all day and night for you but his goal return, at least at Everton was disappointing, but still you had to love the sheer work the lad put in, it was basically Marcus Bent who started the Everton Football Club fascination with the lone striker, sadly we haven't had a "iron lungs" type of lone striker since possibly Andy Johnson.

Johnson himself would run all day but started spending too much time where he could no longer hurt teams rather than his first 5 games when he was on electric form playing through the middle and taking every chance that came his way with deadly accuracy, remember the 3-0 derby?? Of course we do haha.

I never quite took to James Beattie's style, I always though Beats needed a good old fashioned winger like he had at Southampton but he never had it here.

I loved the Yak in his first year with us even though he wouldn't go chasing balls like Bent or Johnson, what a finisher Yakuku was, the thing that served Yakuku so well in that 2007/08 season was having the likes of Cahill, Arteta, Pienaar and even Fernandes in midfield.

The way we are now we do seem to lack that creativity and we lack the Marcus Bent type striker who can successfully run all day, Lukaku is never in a million years going to be able to that.

The sooner the better we either try different personnel in midfield or sign someone creative in the meantime waiting for Barkley's return, it's going to be hard going until then.

He has been carrying an injury which helped to drain his confidence. He' 'll be back. When he signed I can't recall many calling it a poor signing. Sadly we have a coach who lacks supernatural powers and hindsight. He must be replaced at once by Pulis who apparently has.

I watched his performance for the Baggies in Whiskey Nose's farewell, then highlights from the World Cup and then watched him for us against Man Utd. He hasn't suddenly forgot to play football, or is a shite signing; he is just the half-crocked record signing playing two games a week in the team that's struggling. The lad really needs a break, and come back and fresh and loving his football. Murphy's Law, our injury situation has made that impossible.

With the rumours swirling around the Distin situation, is it possible our form is due to the manager losing part of the dressing room? Is there an old guard of Moyes signings and a new guard of Martinez ones?

I say that because, injuries aside, we're really in an appalling run of form here and I'm at a total loss to explain it. Howard seems to have lost the plot. Lukaku looks miserable. Martinez needs to turn it around fast, four more weeks of this shite and he he'll be on the block. And with Moyes available, RM won't make it to Christmas.
I called it first – Moyes back by Christmas if RM can't turn it around. Don't think it can't happen.

Thinking about it, Colin Harvey only signed two good players: Keown and Hinchcliffe aside, the rest were terrible. Generally expensive as well. Nevin (never got it although he did get a knee injury early doors), Beagrie (played like a schoolboy), Milligan (totally out of his depth and £1.5 mil), McCall (solid, no more)... I could go on.

That’s probably the equivalent of £60/70 million today. All topped off with the aforementioned £2.2 million flat track bully.... Jesus!

He's bloody awful.

It has a lot to do with the service he gets, and the way the 10 morons behind him are playing, and although Cottee has a point about work rate, there IS more to it than just Romelu himself. Pointing the finger at your Number 9 and saying he has to create more is bollocks – Lukaku isn't the type of player who just creates goals out of nothing, and there are very few strikers in the world who do everything on their own.

I don't remember Cottee ever making a goal himself either.

I don't think the transfer fee will phase Romelu. He signed for Chelsea for a huge fee and I think he is aware of how good he can be. Confidence (not arrogance) is what he needs.

He did okay in some some games last year, but was poor in a number of games also. He doesn't fit into our system because, as the lone striker, he is required to hold up the ball. He blatantly can't do this; he requires the ball in front of him to be effective. He would suit an Aston Villa, or another team that plays counter attacking football, but not us.

I said it last season, said it when we signed him this season; we should have got Bony from Swansea. There was a reason why Everton had no competition for his signature in the summer, and that's because he is massively overrated by everyone except his would-be father, Roberto, who sees him as his little project. He may get him the sack.

If Lukaku played for a good German team he’d score loads. At the moment, we seem to be attempting a Barcelona light game which will never suit him. To me, his transfer fee suggests that we need to adapt our style to suit him. In fact, I believe that, short term, we need to adapt our style to suit our defence.

In another thread, I suggested that Roberto can be pragmatic. Our injuries demand that he should be even more so.

I've supported this club since 1977, and in my eyes he's up there, 99 goals for Everton so it doesn't matter that 12 were in the Zenith Data etc – it's still a lot of goals.

Check this bad boy out!

http://www.nsno.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=12580.0

I don't think it's either. I think he's worried about losing possession so plays it safe rather than taking risks. Possession football doesn't have to mean less risk-taking. The forwards shouldn't have to worry about keeping possession – Mirallas and Naismith aren't and that's why they score.