{"id":1000507,"date":"2022-02-22T21:17:12","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T21:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/02\/22\/its-not-the-time-to-laugh-at-him\/"},"modified":"2022-02-22T21:17:12","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T21:17:12","slug":"its-not-the-time-to-laugh-at-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/02\/22\/its-not-the-time-to-laugh-at-him\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;It&#8217;s not the time to laugh at him&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\">\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" class=\"entry-thumb\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Romelu_Lukaku-696x392.jpeg\"   alt=\"Romelu Lukaku\" title=\"Romelu Lukaku\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Romelu Lukaku<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Thomas Tuchel has offered Romelu Lukaku support after the Chelsea striker touched the ball just seven times against Crystal Palace, insisting \u201cit\u2019s not the time to laugh about him\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Lukaku was handed his 12th Premier League start of the season at Selhurst Park on Saturday but failed to make an impact as the Blues laboured to an unconvincing 1-0 victory.<\/p>\n<p>The Belgium international, who returned to Stamford Bridge from Inter in a \u00a398 million ($133m) deal last summer, was unable to muster a single shot at goal and only had seven touches \u2013\u00a0fewer than any other player to see 90 minutes\u00a0of action this season.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea are now looking ahead to the first leg of their round of 16 Champions League tie against Lille, and Lukaku is in contention to lead the line once again.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/22191989129,1002554\/MGL\/mgl_ado_atunwa_300x250 --><\/p>\n<p>Tuchel jumped to the forward\u2019s defence at his pre-match press conference, telling reporters: \u201cIt\u2019s not the time to laugh about him, he is our player and we will protect him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ ALSO<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Blues head coach is aware of the damning statistics Lukaku posted against Palace, but has played down their significance and written his performance off as a bad day at the office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat can I do? I don\u2019t know. Well, we have to deal with it,\u201d Tuchel added. \u201cThe data is out there and speaks the language that he wasn\u2019t in our game.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith strikers, it can be like this when they lack confidence or depending on the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lukaku\u2019s poor showing at Palace came on the back of his star turn at the FIFA Club World Cup, as he fired Chelsea\u2019s winner in the last four against Al-Hilal before also scoring in their\u00a0final victory against Palmeiras.<\/p>\n<p>Those two goals took the 28-year-old\u2019s overall tally for the campaign to 10 from 28 appearances, but only five of those have come in the Premier League.<\/p>\n<p>The Blues faithful will hope that Lukaku can rediscover his scoring touch against Lille on Tuesday night before Tuchel\u2019s side turn their attention to a Carabao Cup final date against Liverpool on February 27.<\/p>\n<p>            <!--  [embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=videoseries[\/embed]<!--\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>--><\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"qoM_WRqM-Mk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"22 February 2022\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qoM_WRqM-Mk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Romelu Lukaku Thomas Tuchel has offered Romelu Lukaku support after the Chelsea striker touched the ball just seven times against Crystal Palace, insisting \u201cit\u2019s not the time to laugh about him\u201d. Lukaku was handed his 12th Premier League start of the season at Selhurst Park on Saturday but failed to make an impact as the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1000508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[5332,521],"class_list":["post-1000507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-laugh","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}