NEIL MOXLEY Lukaku wants money where his mouth is...

Follow us on Twitter: @peoplesport ROMELU LUKAKU enjoyed a Jerry Maguire moment this week.

By announcing that he would not be committing his long-term future to Everton, the striker set in motion a public auction.

It was a ‘Show me the money’ plea that will have owners throughout Europe r eaching f or t heir calculators.

Lukaku, in rejecting a £130,000-aweek offer, was pretty much telling the world one thing: There’s more money than that out there.

The Belgian forward still has two years to run on his contract – as Everton boss Ronald Koeman has reminded him.

But the Dutchman knows that loyalty in football extends only to whoever pays most.

After all, didn’t he tell Southampton that he would see out the final year of his own deal just eight months ago before ending up at Goodison Park on twice the money he was receiving on the south coast?

Pounce

All the signs are that Lukaku will get his way. Why? He is a 23-year-old forward with a one-in-two goal record. He is known as being low maintenance and plays lots of games. His two goals against Hull yesterday took him out on his own as this season’s top scorer in the Premier League, with 21.

Were Koeman to drop his striker, the grumblings would start as soon as Everton lost a couple of matches.

No one will win until the inevitable happens and the player is sold – probably for around £80million. Koeman saves face by banking a big fee, Everton pounce on the next unfortunate in the feeding chain, and the process continues all the way down the line.

But if there is one man who should be taking more notice than either Antonio Conte or Pep Guardiola, then it’s the Special One one at Old Trafford.

At present, Jose Mourinho is sweating on the whim of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It must be an unfamiliar place for the Portuguese, to be dangled around like a puppet on a string. But with the Swede unwilling to say if he will take up the second year’s option on his deal, Manchester United’s boss needs a Plan B. Or a Plan L.

Where else is he going to find a goalscorer such as Lukaku who, at the age of 23, has five years’ experience of top-flight football in England and who nets a goal every other game? And, with the service at Old Trafford, he is likely to improve that ratio, too.

Lukaku could be t he next Ibrahimovic.

Mourinho likes powerful targetmen. Within days of him arriving at Stamford Bridge in 2004, Didier Drogba followed suit. What followed was unprecedented success in south-west London. Manchester United’s boss likes to play that way. And he could fashion his modernday dynasty around a man who will be entering the prime of his career. There i s no doubt that Manchester United would like Harry Kane. But Spurs fans would howl like banshees at Daniel Levy if there was even the merest hint of that chip being cashed in.

Bust-up

And anyway, Tottenham’s chief executive could do with the money from Champions League qualification to pay for the new White Hart Lane. He’s not going to do that with Vincent Janssen leading the line. The only fly in the ointment is the rumour that Lukaku was originally shown the door at Chelsea after a spectacular bust- up with Mourinho following a Super Cup clash in Monaco.

However, according to best guestimates from Sweden, Ibrahimovic i s earning a staggering £11m. That’s an eye-watering sum that should help smooth over any issue that Lukaku now has with Mourinho and vice versa.

And, of course, it explains why Lukaku was so keen to give his contractual issue some context with an uncharacteristic outburst. SAMIR NASRI called Jamie Vardy ‘a cheat’ in what has got to be one of the most blindingly obvious cases of double standards in the history of a game famous for them.

This is the same Nasri who booted Hull’s Richard Garcia behind referee Steven Bennett’s back in 2009, isn’t it?

The same Nasri who was accused of ‘diving’ to win a penalty by Spurs boss Harry Redknapp in a north London derby in the League Cup one year later.

This is the same Nasri who was accused of sitting in Thierry Henry’s seat on the France team bus – leading to a public squabble with France and Arsenal team-mate William Gallas which saw the pair fail to communicate with each other for six months.

And this is the same well-adjusted young man who threw a strop when Didier Deschamps failed to choose him for his 2014 World Cup squad and announced his international retirement at the age of 27?

While not condoning Vardy’s actions, if ever there was a case of the biter being bit, this was it.