Spurs lost Harry Kane in a £100m transfer last week and now require a replacement.
The club could look at signing a £35m Premier League flop.
He’s scored 121 goals at that level but has fallen by the wayside in recent years.
Tottenham Hotspur have already made huge strides under Ange Postecoglou with regard to transfers and play style, but could be set to take a massive backwards step on both fronts with one touted move…
With an all-action philosophy that needs every player to give their all to contribute to the press, the exit of Harry Kane has left a vacancy for someone to fill, whether it be by someone already at the club or a star set to be brought in.
Regardless of who is chosen to occupy such an important role, they must align with the style that this manager will refuse to adapt to the needs of one player.
Especially if that man in question is Romelu Lukaku, who has seen his career take a dramatic nosedive in recent years, likely leading to Chelsea’s desperation to offload him.
Foolishly, it seems like the Lilywhites have taken an interest in the Belgian, as journalist Alfredo Pedulla suggested on his website they had made contact over signing him.
Football Transfers value the 30-year-old at €40.9m (£35m), as if to emphasise the depreciation of a man whose most recent permanent switch saw him cost £97.5m.
Upon being appointed as manager of the club, the Australian told fans exactly what they could expect from a Postecoglou team: “It’s all-encompassing. Our defensive work starts at the front and making sure that our front three, whoever they may be, are our first line of defence.
“It’s very easy, especially for an attacking player, to have the incentive of working hard in order to score goals, but to give them the incentive that if they work hard defensively it will also bring you goals has been a big challenge but the players have bought into it.”
Now, to theoretically place Lukaku into a team that demands such a sturdy and unrelenting work rate, and already the cracks start to form.
Everton’s former fitness coach Jan Kluitenberg was particularly damning when speaking about the fitness levels of the Toffees’ all-time top scorer in the Premier League, telling the Liverpool ECHO: “I need to be honest, always. Romelu was a little bit lazy. My challenge is always to make it clear in my mind what the players need.
“In the case of Romelu, I said to Ronald [Koeman]: ‘Let’s sit with him and make it clear for him’ because he has speed, he’s powerful, he’s really a good athlete but in some details it is not always about being stronger or faster.”
Then, as if to back that point up, his return season with Chelsea saw him sit bottom of a selected graphic posted by Sky Sports (via The Daily Star), comparing him to other top-six attackers with regard to average distance covered and sprints made.
His 8.9km distance and ten sprints per 90 sat below even Cristiano Ronaldo, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette, all of whom have since been shipped out by their respective clubs.
Not to mention that his form has hardly been sparkling enough in recent seasons to command a shift in the system to benefit his inclusion, with it taking just one year back at Stamford Bridge to instantly ship him out on loan to Inter Milan.
There, his ten goals in Serie A marked an admirable but hardly outstanding return. Meanwhile, his profligacy at times has been lambasted too, with journalist Deji Faremi once writing: “This Lukaku is very useless . How can you miss that kind of chance?!”
Lukaku may once have been a truly devastating striker for this level, with 121 Premier League goals to his name, but those times are well beyond him. He would truly get eaten alive were he selected to start up front for Postecoglou, as all the evidence suggests.
