Everton manager Ronald Koeman has performed a u-turn on comments about Romelu Lukaku and insists the club want to keep their star striker for as long as possible.
Koeman made a surprising confession during the international break that Lukaku needs to leave Goodison Park for a bigger club in order to really fulfil his potential as one of the world’s best strikers.
Lukaku, 23, who joined Everton for a club record £28m fee in 2014, was heavily linked with a move away from the club during the summer before being convinced to stay by Koeman, and the Dutchman insists the Toffees are not looking to sell the Belgium international.
“First of all you had several headlines about what I said about different questions,” The Daily Mail quote Koeman as saying. “It is not to defend myself but you take the headline out of context.
“Of course what we like to show Romelu is that Everton will grow, we will be bigger and we will fight for titles. If you look now at Everton, if we stay at this level then of course it is not good that he finishes his career at Everton because he is one of the best strikers and he is still 23.
“If he stays for more years that is not bad for his career, he is improving and learning and he is one of better strikers that we have in the Premier League and Europe.
“Of course there is a lot of interest in the player and finally the player needs to make a decision and a club needs to make a decision to accept yes or not, but what I tried to do is keep Romelu for as long as possible at the club.”
In the last four Premier League campaigns only Sergio Aguero (75), Harry Kane (52) has scored more goals than Lukaku (50).
For more stats on Romelu Lukaku, click here to visit his WhoScored player page
