Lukaku joins Mirallas on the sidelines for Belgium

One of the best young centre forwards in Europe.

There will obviously be some clause or other that says he has to go etc. Perhaps the air journey will help his "muscle fatigue" get some rest and he will continue his professional progress by watching his international team mates train and play. Is it totally inappropriate to perhaps ask National Federations to consider their playersÂ’ employers when he is apparently unfit to play and encourage him to stay in home base and get himself fit?

Some "injuries" these seem to be when it appears that travelling around Europe seems to be part of the recuperative process. It would appear that it is not just Lukaku who is unfit, the whole game itself would appear to be in need of some treatment across a number of fronts.

Surely we don't release injured for international duty, do we? Well apparently we have, which raises a more worrying issue regarding our medical experts.

Perhaps this might shed some light upon our injury issues?

I know the likes of Giggs et al barely played in non-competitive national fixtures, often picking up slight niggles beforehand, but it seems a bit much. Also, what if it's a really obvious injury (e.g. broken leg) that couldn't exactly be faked, would they still require they attend for assessment?

The Blues have suffered a curious spate of the same injury this term, with Romelu Lukaku incredibly becoming the 13th first-team player to be put out of action. Since Roberto Martinez arrived 18 months ago the Toffees have endured an alarming 22 hamstring injuries to those 13 players; the most serious being the one which caused influential midfielder James McCarthy to miss a glut of important fixtures. Now top-scorer Lukaku has been sidelined for between two and three weeks, as Bryan Oviedo remains in the treatment room with a similar problem.

Let’s hope this results in some proper analysis of what happens in training and how the players are conditioned - of course it could be put down to bad-luck and nothing anybody could do about it.

I believe the vast majority of Blues can see through the short term knee jerk reactions of those doubting Lukaku.

The lad will develop into a top class centre forward.