GRAEME SOUNESS has urged Chelsea players to show Romelu Lukaku ‘the f***ing door’ following his incredible outburst.
The Belgian striker, 28, has been dropped for the Blues’ massive Premier League clash with Liverpool.
Lukaku recently conducted an interview slamming his lack of game-time at Stamford Bridge and seemingly pining for a return to Inter Milan.
The quotes left Chelsea fans livid, with Tuchel dropping him for arguably his side’s biggest game of the season.
Ahead of the 4.30pm kick off on Sunday, Sky Sports’ pundits had their say – with Souness saying Lukaku owes his team-mates an apology.
Souness raged: “I can’t tell you something worse a player could do at this moment in the season.
“To come out and say, basically, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t want to play with the players I’m playing with anymore’ and to question the manager…
“That damages Chelsea going forward – it has to. I think they’re damaged after today.
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“If Liverpool turn up and beat Chelsea it compounds the problem and the spotlight is on the manager, which I think is outrageous.”
Souness continued: “We’re trying to understand where his head’s been to come up with such a ridiculous and damaging statement.
“We’ve all played with players who need to be training hard every day and playing every week to get the best out of them.
“Lukaku is a big, powerful man and we’ve seen him put weight on previously.
“I would think his disappointment, and the reason this statement has come out, is because he’s not come straight back in, starting games and playing 90 minutes.”
Souness added “I don’t think anyone’s at fault here. I think he’s a player that has to train every day and play every week to get to the level of scoring goals… it is the hardest job on the pitch.
“[Lukaku] has come back, he’s not gone into the team and he’s come out with this nonsense, which is totally disrespectful.
“He’s 29 years old, he’s not 19. He should’ve known better that this statement damages the football club enormously.
“It’s like walking into the dressing room and saying ‘I don’t want to be with you anymore’.
“I’d be like, ‘well if you don’t like it, there’s the f***ing door. On you go’.
“He’s more than crossed the line. He has to apologise to his team-mates.
“It’s so offside, it beggars belief. He’s got to stand in front of his mates and say [sorry].”
SAME OLD STORY
Jamie Carragher backed Tuchel for dropping £97.5million summer signing Lukaku – and even suggested it would be better for the club to axe the striker than their ‘top-class manager’.
Carragher said: “The problem I have with it is Lukaku has done this at every club he’s been at.
“He’s not shy at doing an interview and dropping a few hints on not being 100 per cent happy. He’s had a lot of clubs already.
“Now, this is a guy who scores a lot of goals at every club he’s been at and he STILL doesn’t leave on the greatest of terms.
“I think that’s still a slight problem… the interviews he gives.
“He’s trying to curry favour with the Inter Milan fans as he got a lot of criticism.
“Lukaku has come in as the guy who can take this team to the title. This is what they were lacking, a real centre forward.
“He started the season really well, then got injured and Chelsea’s standard of play was actually slightly higher and as a team scored MORE goals when Lukaku was out.
“The fact he never went straight back into the team was a problem for him.
“But Tuchel is the manager of a group of players who are all very expensive – don’t forget Kai Havertz, who probably takes his place as a false nine, scored the winner in the Champions League final.
“He cost £72million himself, so there’s a lot of big players at Chelsea.
“I think he’s upset he hasn’t gone straight back into the team and Tuchel has looked at that and thought, ‘it doesn’t matter who you are, you aren’t doing as well as the others’.”
Carragher speculated Lukaku may have returned from injury unfit based on Tuchel’s recent quotes urging him to ‘play, train sleep and eat well’.
The former England defender continued: “Maybe [Tuchel] wasn’t happy with the way [Lukaku] looked after himself, I don’t know…
“But that quote from Tuchel about how Lukaku ‘has to play, train, sleep well, drink water, eat well’, all those things, I didn’t know if that’s sort of a slight dig at the way he’d come back.
“I think [Lukaku] has thought ‘I’m the main man at Chelsea’ and it hasn’t quite materialised for him after coming back from injury.”
But Carragher also suggested Chelsea should axe Lukaku before they do Tuchel.
He claimed: “This is a club where the players have always won against the manager.
“In terms of top managers around the world, there are three in the Premier League – Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel.
“Look at the problems Man Utd are having with their managerial situation – they still don’t know who they’re going to get at the end of the season.
“With Chelsea, even though they’ve had great success changing managers, it may be easier to replace Lukaku than the manager they’ve got.
“I think they’ve got a proper top-class manager.”
Carragher went on to say he would still want Lukaku in the starting XI if he was a Chelsea player – provided the Belgian apologised.
The ex-Liverpool man explained: “If that was Steven Gerrard or Luis Suarez, and they’d apologised, and we were going into a big game, I’d still want them in my team.”
‘BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD.’
Ex-Chelsea striker Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink also had his say, urging Lukaku to stay away from further chats.
Hasselbaink said: “The best thing [Lukaku] can do is not give interviews anymore, because that is just absolutely bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad.
“I like Romelu, I think he’s absolutely magnificent. When he’s playing he gives Chelsea a different dimension.
“But what he has said and how he has said it… I don’t understand that.
“Having frustration that you’re not playing is fine. How you react to that is coming in and making a difference.
“Every player is going to go through bad spells. Every player is going to have injuries.
“If you don’t come back the way you should, the manager has the right to not play you.
“It’s four matches… to spit your dummy out after four matches and you want to go away and back to Inter…
“If you really wanted to stay at Inter then say, ‘I’m not going to Chelsea, give me half my wages and I’ll stay.
“That doesn’t happen, does it? What he’s done is really disrespectful.”
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