Fan Comment

Can you remember who scored goals before Lukaku?

I know my memory is fading fast, but I had to look up the results and stats of seasons before Lukaku started his journey to becoming a goal scoring power house.

If you go back to past seasons starting with 2011-12 can you name who scored more than 6 premier league goals per season for us? A few stats gurus will come up with the answers in no time but I was surprised that I could not as 2012 is only 5 years ago!

2011-12 season 9 goals Jelavic
2012-13 season 11 goals Fellani, Jelavic 7 goals
2013-14 season - 15 Lukaku, Mirallas 8
2014-15 season- 10 Lukaku, Mirallas 7
2015-16 season - 18 Lukaku, Barkley 8

My reading of the last 5 seasons is that in the last 3 seasons we have become more and more reliant on Lukaku and we have totally shaped our play to set him up with goal scoring opportunities which he took. For 3 seasons the manager, coaching staff and players did not have to come up with a plan B. In fact generally when Lukaku did not score neither did we. In fact I would argue that we became lazy. It was far too easy to give Lukaku the ball and let him score.

Now we come to this season. We have lost Lulaku's 18 goals, Barkley's 8 goals and Mirallas 7/8 goals (and not forgetting Coleman's contributions) from the 3 previous seasons. I make that we are missing 34-36 goals when even in a good year we rarely scored much more than 60. So it should be no real surprise that we don't look like scoring a goal anytime soon. We have simply forgotten how to score! We have forgotten how to create goals. We have bought players who have scored goals for their previous clubs but they don't look like scoring any for EFC.

The sad thing is that this has been coming for a while. We all knew that Lukaku would leave at some point, but did anyone think that it might be good idea to design a long or even short term plan to cope with his departure? We all know that the answer to that question is NO in big friggin capital letters! Where does the fault lie? With Martinez and Koeman for not having the foresight to know that that day would come? No of course not! They were paid to have successful season, get into Europe, not to design a long term plan to replace Lukaku.

So with all the exceptional football brains that are part of EFC why did no one take the responsibility to figure what do we do when Lukaku goes?

I have no proof but I cannot think of any available goal scorer in the last transfer window (even Giroud) who would have solved our problem. For the last 3 years all our master tactical/strategic plans have been focussed on getting the ball to Lukaku and then he will do the rest. To have been so naive to think that we would find a goal scorer to replace Lukaku in 2016-17 transfer window is astounding and bordering on totally inept and incompetent management.

Personally I think we could get Mourinho, Conte and Pochettino all together and with the resources we now have at our disposal, I really don't think any of them would be successful. For game after game we don't look scoring. We are hoping for a stroke of luck, a favourable refereeing decision, an own goal or a penalty.

It's sods law that having said all of this, we will now go and score goals v Lyon and Watford and win both games. If we do, then writing this, will have been well worth it. If we don't, we are even further "up shit creek without a paddle" or a manager.

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