Emerging from the bench in Gameweek 5 to grab Everton’s winner at West Ham, Romelu Lukaku signalled his intentions to nail down a starting berth on Merseyside. Deemed surplus to requirement by parent club Chelsea for the second consecutive season, the big Belgian’s season-long loan deal is already looking a canny piece of business by Roberto Martinez after he racked up four goals in his first three appearances.
Having dropped down to 7.4 in the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) game, Lukaku’s haul of 29 points across his trio of fixtures for the Toffees has seen him recently return to his original price of 8.0. With a double for Belgium against Croatia last Friday ensuring he remains at the forefront of our Fantasy thinking, Lukaku is already the fourth most popular forward in the game with an ownership of 22% – highlighting the remarkable turnaround in his appeal as Fantasy managers jump on the bandwagon ahead of Saturday’s game with Hull.
So often utilised as a sub under Steve Clarke at West Brom last year, his prospects of starts were handed a significant boost after Martinez declared during the current international break:
“Romelu can be as good as he wants to be. He will get the opportunity here. He will have the time to experiment things and try things. Remember that he hasn’t played many 90 minutes in his career and it is important he does play 90 minutes for us because that allows his game to go into full flow. That is the way he is as a player. How many games did he play 90 minutes at West Brom? He was involved in 35 games – how many did he play in [from the start]? Seven. So it is like seeing a young man who has now become a proper man with an important role and that’s what we want him to have here. This is the first time in his career that he is going to take that role so everything is in his hands.”
With this in mind, in this latest article for members, we take a look at the statistics in order to ascertain whether Lukaku’s role within the Everton set-up differs from what he offered up at the Hawthorns in the previous campaign:
