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Medical guru tells 'big lad' Lukaku how much weight he must lose after Chelsea source reveal
Romelu Lukaku may only need to lose a “pound or so” before he is able to reach optimum levels again at Chelsea.
That is the view of medical expert Ben Dinnery, who runs the Premier Injuries site and has a background in injury and data analysis.
Lukaku, a £97.5million signing from Inter Milan, was recently forced to apologise after his remarks to Sky Italy about his unhappiness at Chelsea.
This site revealed last Thursday (6 January) that Blues boss Thomas Tuchel had previously told the Belgian hitman that he was overweight.
Lukaku has weighed in at between three and eight kilograms heavier than he was during his goal-laden season with Inter in 2020-21.
Dinnery suggests that the 28-year-old’s various setbacks since his return to Chelsea will have factored into his less than ideal condition.
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“He had spent over a month on the sidelines due to a high ankle sprain,” he told Football Insider‘s Adam Williams.
“He wasn’t involved in a lot of training during that spell. His appearances around that spell were only bit-part.
“For teams involved in European football, you don’t get too much training between games.
“If you’re not playing regularly, you can get deconditioned when you get further into the season. He contracted Covid as well and that was a setback.
“We know Tuchel is meticulous in terms of his planning. He expects players to be at a certain level of fitness to produce optimum levels.
“Maybe Lukaku wasn’t in those parameters. But we’re not talking stuffing your face over Christmas. It may be just a pound or so.
“The impact of the schedule and Covid on availability in these training sessions has been huge.
“You can’t always get those high-intensity sessions because you haven’t got the personnel to do the activities you’d like.
“He’s a big lad but with more minutes under his belt, he’ll get that sharpness.”
Lukaku has registered eight goals and two assists this term.
He has now netted in three of his last four matches, including the 5-1 victory over non-league Chesterfield in the FA Cup on Saturday (8 January).
In other news, pundit suggests Man United well placed to sign Chelsea star Antonio Rudiger after source’s “huge” reveal.