Romelu Lukaku
I’ve been a long time admirer of Romelu Lukaku, obviously as an Everton fan I have an affection because of how good he was for us during our record points season. Going back even earlier when he first appeared on FIFA 11 for Anderlecht as what would be known now as an “Exciting Prospect”, he was always going to be special.
Everyone has different opinions on what they favour from their strikers, some may prefer a Roberto Firmino type striker who is technically brilliant but doesn’t see goals as the priority, Firmino is a player who links up with team-mates and acts as the glue to the attack. Reminiscing further, people may prefer their striker to be someone of the mould of Filippo Inzaghi who was not the best technically but could use his intelligence and timing to poach everything in and around the penalty area.
My preference in a striker is a player in the mould of Romelu Lukaku. Rom’s got everything to his game to be considered an all time great striker by the time his career is over. Everyone knows that his touch or decision making when receiving the ball with his back to goal is sometimes questionable. If we delve deeper into Lukaku’s game its clear to see he’s an elite striker, he can score with his head, his right foot and of course his trademark powerful left foot. This was evident during Sir Alex Ferguson’s last game in charge for Man Utd when Lukaku scored a perfect hat-trick for West Brom in a 5–5 draw. Watching Rom for years at Everton one of his best traits is his strength and turn of pace, go back and watch his goal against Chelsea in the FA Cup or his goal against Leicester when he skipped past Wes Morgan and finish past Kasper Schmeichel.
In this piece I am going to try and answer some questions about what has made Rom so clinical in front of goal; Who creates, where from & is there anyone similar to Lukaku right now?
So lets go back 6 seasons to when Everton signed Rom on a permanent deal after is successful loan from Chelsea. We want to look at what areas of the pitch Lukaku most received passes from, we could visualise this using a heat map, density plot or just by looking at the clusters of arrows… but that would be messy and difficult to read. What we’re going to do is use a 2D Histogram divided into 20x20 bins, lets have a look.
Ok, so straight away we can interpret that darker bins are the more frequent ones and light are the lesser frequent. I’ve also added a rugplot in the margins, when dealing with this many passes it becomes a bit useless but even if one person gets some sort of information from it then its successful in my eyes.
Watching Everton live that season I know that the darker bins on the left side of the pitch is the handy work of Leighton Baines. Baines and Lukaku made 37 & 47 appearances that season respectively, I think we should take a look at Baines’ passes to Lukaku to if the data holds up and where Rom recieved.
Yep! It all adds up. What is most surprising to me is that there is not a lot of successful passes being recieved in the penalty area, rather just outside the box in the left half-space. Also there doesn't seem to be many longer passes to Lukaku, this would probably coincide with Roberto Martinez’s philosophy which saw some beautiful football at Everton.
If we look back at where our passes came from we can see a small cluster of darker shaded bins near the centre of the pitch, 2 words… Gareth Barry.
Gareth Barry was phenomenal for Everton but we’ll save him for another piece. There is not much difference in Lukaku receiving on the left or right side, looking at the numbers it leans more towards the left side which is rare because a left footed striker would usually want to cut in from the right. We should take a look at Rom’s shot map for that season and see what we can juice from that.
Looking at the shot map we can clearly see that Lukaku has taken more shots from the left side of the penalty area which all adds up with our previous assumptions. I have removed the penalties from these maps as they skew the xG number, its worth noting that Lukaku scored 20 goals this season in all competitions including 8 in the Europa League & 2 in the FA Cup… Only one penalty.
So, Lukaku has just completed his first season at Everton and has set himself up nicely for another successful campaign. We’re going to look at Rom’s 2015/16 shot map and see if there was anything he changed.
Right away if we compare the two we can see that Lukaku is taking less shots in low xG areas and taking a lot more shots inside of the penalty area. Lukaku took 105 shots in the 2014–15 season and 117 in the 2015/16 season so theres not a ‘huge’ difference in the quantity of shots he had simply improved the quality of his shots. Looking at the map we can see he scored 8 more goal in this season compared to last, he also scored 25 goals in all competitions compared to 20 in the previous season so his trajectory is going in the right direction.
With Leighton Baines being sidelined for the best part of the 2015/16 season having only played 22 games in all competitions it was down to Seamus Coleman to be the creative force from the wide area. We’ll take a look at his passes to Rom like we did Baines.
Almost parallel to Baines in the previous season, another contributing factor in Lukaku’s 25 goal season was the consistency of Ross Barkley who played 47 games in all competitions. Fans got impatient of Roberto Martinez’s play from the back approach and he was subsequently sacked in May 2016. As an Everton fan it wasn’t one of the better seasons we’ve had but one bright spark was the connection between Lukaku and Barkley.
The 2016/17 season was a huge success for Rom, it was his last season at Everton before his big move to Man Utd. It was all change at Everton too with Idrissa Gueye, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Ademola Lookman, Morgan Schneiderlin, Yannick Bolasie & Ashley Williams all coming in as well as new manager Ronald Koeman taking the reigns.
The areas in which Lukaku received passes from is distributed a lot more evenly compared to past seasons, the addition of Idrissa Gueye holding the midfield and recycling possession definitely helped the more creative players flourish and I think this what Lukaku benefited from the most.
The shot map above says it all about Rom’s final season at Everton. An expected goal value of 15.89, he outperformed that to score 25 goals in the league that year and was 2nd top scorer behind Harry Kane who netted 29 times.
I’ve decided to add a few GIFS of some goals scored by Lukaku from the 16/17 season just to try and break down what he is doing from a coaching perspective.
The goal against Bournemouth is technically perfect, Rom has his body open to receive the pass and plays a first time one-two pass with Ross Barkley off the back foot. The pass draws out the Bournemouth CB which creates the space for Rom to spin into, the first touch on the outside of the boot is perfect and the 2nd touch to set his balance is even better. From a coaching point of view the strike is everything you teach to young players; body over the ball, follow through after the strike & aim small miss small which makes the strike so precise.
This goal against Leicester is Romelu Lukaku in his purest form, holds off even the strongest defender has the drive and intensity to push towards goal. His 2nd touch after beating Wes Morgan makes the defender think he his going to try and finish at the near post but again Rom has the skill to beat the defender, open his body and slide it home for an easy finish.
This one against Hull is just pure confidence, given that amount of space and time a lot of strikers would try the finish to the goalkeepers left (particularly left footers). What Rom does is something that reminded of Ronaldo (R9) where he’d just make keepers look silly. The devil is in the details and it’s the minuscule change of pace when approaching the keeper which makes all the difference.
I thought when Lukaku signed for Man Utd that he would be a success for years there. Lining up with Anthony Martial an Marcus Rashford in attack, my thinking was that not many defences in the league could handle that type of diversity and difference in profiles. I also thought the friendship between Rom and Paul Pogba would translate onto the pitch and be the backbone of the Utd team for years. We’ll take a look at the histogram and see what areas of the pitch Lukaku received from.
Without doubt this is the most creative map we’ve seen so far in Rom’s career, we can see unlike at the early at Everton he is receiving the ball from all over the pitch and not just a section here or there. Considering how good Lukaku is in the air, it surprises me that theres not many passes/crosses being played from around the penalty area. I have made these maps only taking successful passes into account so maybe the quality of the crosses wasn’t great. We can see a larger cluster of passes being played from the right side of the pitch a bit deeper so lets take a look at those.
Like we thought, Antonio Valencia played 31 league games this year so we assumed that he’d be responsible for the right side cluster and I think we were correct. As we look further infield we can see a couple of darker bins which we know = more frequent passes, the main creator in the side is Paul Pogba so lets see if its his handy work & see where he gives Lukaku the ball from.
Impressive. There is a lot of variety as you would expect from a central midfielder, what I like the most is the fact Lukaku recieved the ball quite a lot in a dangerous area (highlighted). A lot of people refer to this as zone 14 and due to the distance and the angle of the goal a lot of offensive actions occur here so it’s good to see Rom getting the ball in such areas. The obvious question we want answering now is “what did Lukaku do with the ball when he got it”?
Okay so there’s a bit to digest here, we can see that Rom is taking quite a few low xG shots from outside the area and to the left and right. There’s also a few shots that have a high expected goal value being missed for whatever reason, I don’t know. On the plus side we can see that Lukaku is scoring the majority of the goals he is supposed to which is all we can ask. Even though he outperformed his xG again, I’d say Lukaku wouldn’t call this a personal success considering he scored 8 more NPG in a weaker Everton side in the previous season. He was Everton’s only real outlet to be fair, Ross Barkley scored the 2nd most amount of goals in the 2016/17 season with 6… Quite a difference to Lukaku’s 26.
Something I rarely do is look at the progressive passing of strikers but because of good Lukaku’s link up play is I couldn’t resist, we shouldn’t pay much attention to the 15m & 30m passes… only the 10m. The shorter passes are the ones that will show us Rom’s link up work which is quite good
I just wanted to add another GIF as an example of how threatening Lukaku can be when afforded space in and around the area. When Rom receives the ball here, he opens his body giving the impression he’s going to shoot which leave the defenders static. Maybe the pass could have little less weight on it but the keeper did a great job anticipating.
Lukaku’s 2nd season at Man Utd started brilliantly as he scored 4 goals in the first 5 matches, when Jose Mourinho was sacked I think it’s fair to say the writing was on the wall regarding Rom’s future at the club. Before Mourinho was dismissed Lukaku went on a drought that lasted 12 games which must have knocked his confidence. Add to the equation Ole Gunna Solskjær preferred to start Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial over the Belgium and you can see why he only scored 12 goals… his lowest since the 2014/15 season.
Like we said, his confidence must have taken a bit of a hit during this season. There’s a lot of shots with a high expected goal value being missed, shots that normally Rom would put in the back of the net.
At Inter Milan under Antonio Conte everyone knew what we were going to get, wingbacks, plenty of crosses and high intensity game. We can see the map above shows us that there’s creativity all over the field.
We already know that the right sided threat is that of Antonio Candreva & Danilo D’Ambrosio so we’ll leave that alone. What I want to look at is the creativity of Nicolò Barella and the connection with Lautaro Martinez.
I can tell you that the pass map by Nicolò Barella to Lukaku is fantasic, if we look deeper we see that nearly all of the passes completed are received by Rom in dangerous areas. It is very similar to Paul Pogba’s from earlier & if Lukaku is getting that type of service aswell as the threat from the wings, its no wonder he’s being compared to Inter greats such as Ronaldo & Adriano.
The connection between Lukaku and Lautaro Martinez has been one of the highlights of the footballing season, they’ve played a combined 97 games in all competitions and have amassed 50 goals between them; 31 for Lukaku & 19 for Lautaro.
We can see from the passes the tactical setup used by Conte, Rom on the right side and Lautaro on the left. A lot of the passes received by Rom are short into the feet passes averaging between 10 & 20m where he can use his hold up play and bring players into the game.
This time looking at Lukaku’s passes to Lautaro we get an idea of how closely the two are playing together, we can see plenty of little short passes for Lautaro. Almost all the passes between the two are in that zone 14 we spoke about earlier, closer to the goal = more productive… Which is exactly where Conte wants his strikers.
A small visual aid to show the point I was making, Lautaro controls the long pass, holds the ball up and lays off for Rom to finish. This is how good they are together… you could imagine the exact same scenario but with roles reversed, that’s how well rounded & compatible the pair are.
The final shot map we’re going to view and once again Lukaku is out performing his expected goals, I know people are sceptical about xG and think it’s a bit silly but the more information and indicators of how a players is or should be performing is the end goal… Right?
As we’re over 2600 words in I’m going to leave it there, writing this and compiling the charts, GIFS & stats has been fun. I don’t write much at all but when I do i make sure it’s something I’m passionate about. I hope you’ve enjoyed this and gotten a different insight to what you already know about Romelu Lukaku.
