Romelu Lukaku can prove his doubters wrong at Manchester United, starting with Liverpool this weekend

Sign up to Miguel Delaney’s Reading the Game newsletter sent straight to your inbox for free

Sign up to Miguel’s Delaney’s free weekly newsletter

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Romelu Lukaku has scored in every game bar one that he has played at club and international level this season. For a striker to be able to say that as the nights draw in is remarkable. After the defining move of his career, one to a club with the stature of Manchester United too, he has seamlessly acclimatised to his new surroundings.

His late strike in the recent rout of Crystal Palace, tapped in despite carrying a bandaged-up ankle and having looked out-of-sorts all afternoon, was his seventh goal in his first seven league games for United. With it, Lukaku matched a record set by Andy Cole in 1995. To make the record his own, he must score at Anfield on Saturday.

Lukaku has played 57 games against the notional ‘top six’ to date during his Premier League career. Some came when he was considered little more than a fringe player or a promising youngster, some when he was a leading man in his own right, but all at different stages of his development.

In those 57 games, he has scored 15 goals - slightly higher than one every four games. Even when considering that the majority of those games came in the colours of West Bromwich Albion and Everton, it is a record that a £75m striker should be expected to improve upon.

There are those who still say he has something to prove at the highest level before he can be considered in the same class as, say, back-to-back Golden Boot winner Harry Kane or the player on the verge of becoming Manchester City’s all-time leading scorer, Sergio Aguero. Compare him to the continent’s best out-and-out No 9s: Robert Lewandowski, Luis Suarez, even Gonzalo Higuain and there is still something left to prove.

After all, Lukaku’s first appearance in the Champions League proper came only a month ago, his record at international tournaments with Belgium is average at best and his harshest critics are quick to suggest that he is something of a ‘flat-track bully’. That is one way of putting it. He could also be called dependable - one who can be relied upon to put the lesser lights to the sword.

After Christmas last season, Lukaku scored 13 goals in eight straight Premier League home games with Everton. Twelve of those goals and seven of those games came against clubs that eventually finished below Ronald Koeman’s side. All of them ultimately helped seventh-placed Everton build a 15-point gap between them and the rest.

On his own turf and against inferior opponents, Lukaku was simply relentless and that is what has made him such a snug fit for a side who drew eight times against teams outside the top six last year. United could not rely on Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the same way, as influential as the Swede was, and the many chances he spurned resulted in many points dropped.

The early evidence suggests United have fixed that problem of sides from the lower reaches of the table taking points at Old Trafford. Their other major issue last season, one that went slightly under the radar, was a failure to compete with the bigger fish when on their travels. United scored just once away from home against their fellow title contenders, against Tottenham Hotspur in the final game at White Hart Lane.

In fairness, that 2-1 defeat and a 2-0 reverse at the Emirates came when they had essentially abrogated their Premier League campaign to concentrate on success in the Europa League, but they showed little to no threat in goalless draws at Anfield and the Etihad, while they were utterly wretched in a 4-0 defeat at Stamford Bridge.

If they are to challenge, they must pick up more than two points from these five fixtures this season and for now, their chief supplier of goals is a player who must - and should - improve on his record against the top clubs.

Before the international break had even ended, Jose Mourinho had pre-empted this piece. “This is press talk, or pundit talk: ‘We have something to prove, Lukaku has to score, we have to win [is what they say]’,” he said in an interview with Sky Sports on Monday. “We have to prove nothing.”

He is right. After 11 goals in 10 games across all competitions, nobody will be concerned if Lukaku records only his second blank of the season on Saturday. Equally, nobody should be surprised if he surpasses Cole’s record. Sooner or later, Lukaku will cast aside those lingering doubts over his ability at the elite level but now is the time to do it.