Media selling Lukaku on behalf of Everton

You just knew that as Romelu Lukaku banged in his fourth goal of the afternoon on Saturday to become the Premier League’s top scorer that the rumour mills would start cranking again. True to expectations, here we go.

Yahoo Sport is today claiming that Chelsea are willing to shell out the big bucks for Lukaku to return to Stamford Bridge this summer, and that the Belgian, and we quote “who is open to such a switch”.

No other details, doesn’t cite a source or where this little nugget of information came out from, just that apparently Lukaku is open to moving back to Chelsea. For the record, Rom has said no such thing this season, and in fact has stated multiple times that he wants to be a part of Ronald Koeman’s project at Everton.

Now if Everton do not qualify for Europe this season, this is a different conversation, with the Blues likely to sell to the highest bidder, and why not. The striker is one of the hottest young properties in the game. Stick an absolutely ridiculous pricetag on the lad like £80m and put him on the market.

Eventually agent extraordinaire Mino Raiola will moan and complain about it and we’ll probably get £70m in guaranteed money for his proven performances. After all, we were able to get £50m for John Stones just this last summer despite the defender doing his best Bambi-impersonation on the pitch last season.

A lot rests on the Toffees’ ability to make it to Europe. If they don’t, they might lose Lukaku at the end of the season, but it might also pave the way for a giant payoff that the Blues can then use to build a deeper squad too.