Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
‘OLE HAS MORE GO THAN MO’
ROMELU LUKAKU has revealed that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has made him feel like the main man at Manchester United again.
The £75million Belgian striker suffered a spectacular fall from grace under previous United boss Jose Mourinho.
But the Portuguese’s sacking – and the club’s decision to bring former forward Solskjaer back to Old Trafford as manager – has given Lukaku the lift he was looking for.
And the 6ft3in hitman’s praise for Solskjaer reads like a damning indictment of Mourinho.
Lukaku said: “I want to improve – and this manager gives me a chance. “Do I feel wanted again? Yes.
“And because the manager makes me feel like that, I want to give him the best I can.
“I am a team player. Everybody knows that. And every day the manager gives me a clear indication of what he wants me to do, and I just try to give my best.
“We have a really open relationship, really honest. When he [Solskjaer] is not happy with something in training
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he will say it and I will really try to work on it.
“It’s just nice to have someone who loves the game in the same way, so I just try to make the best of it.”
Mourinho once said it was impossible to coach a striker to score goals.
But Solskjaer has been working hard with Lukaku and Marcus Rashford on the training ground.
Lukaku said: “It has just been positional stuff, and trying to create every time I get the ball.
“He knows I can score and he knows I can deliver a pass.
“So the way we now play helps me – he wants us to play up-tempo, with a lot of high intensity. He works with me and Marcus almost every day.”
United have work to do, with a Nou Camp second-leg mountain to climb to reach the Champions League semi-finals after losing 1-0 to Barcelona on Wednesday night.
But Lukaku insisted: “There is nothing to be afraid of. We have to believe. We have to go to Barcelona and treat that game like it is a final.”
He’d love a repeat of United’s brilliant second-leg turnaround at Paris Saint-Germain in the last-16, but cautioned: “Barcelona is a different game. We have to be much better than we were in Paris.
“And we also have to make sure we don’t concede.”