Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku should keep things simple as he tries to end his eight-game scoring drought, according to former United striker Dimitar Berbatov.
The Belgian will line up against his old club Everton in the Premier League on Sunday having not found the back of the net since United’s 2-1 win over Watford in mid-September.
Despite his lack of goals he has received backing from his manager Jose Mourinho and also from Berbatov who spent four years at Old Trafford from 2008, scoring 56 goals.
“I know he’s not scored for eight games, but I don’t think the criticism of Lukaku is fair. As Jose Mourinho said, he’s working very hard for the team, but this might actually be working against the striker,” the Bulgarian told Betfair.
“He wants to impress so badly that he is doing too much, and not doing the simple things like getting into the box. He is probably over complicating things; you don’t want to see him popping up at left-back as he did on Tuesday.”
Berbatov was referring to United’s 1-0 defeat by Juventus in the Champions League, in which Lukaku was often left isolated up front and so had to drop deep.
Suggestions that his United form is suffering because of the system employed have some basis in the statistics.
While the 25-year-old has scored four goals in two games for Belgium in the Nations League he has needed 13 in all competitions to reach that tally for United.
In that time, Mourinho’s side have slipped to 10th place in the Premier League standings and also crashed out of the League Cup to second-tier Derby County.
Ahead of Everton’s visit to Old Trafford, Berbatov was confident that United had the tools to bounce back.
“It wasn’t a good performance from United [against Juventus], they need to improve in all areas of the pitch. But they have the manager and the players and they will be putting pressure on themselves to get it right,” he said.