Chelsea transfer decision slammed as pundit claims something is ‘fundamentally wrong’ at the club

Joe Cole has slammed Chelsea’s decision to loan Romelu Lukaku out this season as Mauricio Pochettino’s side have struggled to hit the back of the net.

Chelsea struggled to score goals last season and those same problems have been hindering their progress in the Premier League this time around.

Despite boasting the fifth-highest xG in the Premier League up until this point, Chelsea have only scored 13 goals across their opening 10 matches.

An average of 1.3 goals per game is a slight improvement on last season, but it is still nowhere near the level that Chelsea need to be scoring at.

Nicolas Jackson is still adapting to life in England and Chelsea haven’t been able to call upon Christopher Nkunku as of yet because of injury.

Raheem Sterling is their top scorer at this point with three goals, but even he struggled to make an impact in their latest defeat against Brentford.

Despite having 17 shots, Chelsea failed to hit the back of the net against Brentford and they ended up losing the game 2-0. While Chelsea have struggled to score on a regular basis, Lukaku hasn’t had such issues.

Since arriving at Roma on loan, the Belgian forward has scored eight goals across all competitions and seems to be enjoying life under Jose Mourinho.

Given Chelsea’s struggles in front of goal, Cole has questioned the club’s decision to let Lukaku leave on loan this summer.

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Cole slams Lukaku decision

It’s no secret that Lukaku didn’t have the best of spells with Chelsea upon his return to the club in 2021. He struggled for regular game time after falling out with Thomas Tuchel and he spent last season on loan with Inter Milan.

Pochettino quickly made it clear that Lukaku was not part of his plans going forward at Chelsea, but Cole thinks that could have been a mistake.

“You here all the buzzwords around the club but at the end of the day, we can’t score goals,” he told TNT Sport.

“With Romelu Lukaku, for all of his faults, he was in the door. He was a success at Inter Milan, he scored goals at Everton and West Brom in this country, why couldn’t he score goals at Chelsea? What was wrong [with him?]

“He is scoring goals now for Roma. So we have to look within ourselves, what is wrong with this club at the moment? The squad is unbalanced, but there is something wrong fundamentally with the club at the moment.”

Chelsea currently find themselves in the bottom half of the Premier League table and in need of a spark to reignite their hopes of finishing in a Champions League spot come May.

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