Romelu Lukaku is training with Anderlecht

Romelu Lukaku wants to leave Manchester United. Internazionale and Juventus both want to sign Lukaku, but neither club have the money to meet Manchester United’s asking price. As such, Lukaku is still a United player. All this despite publicly agitating for a move, missing all of the preseason matches, unprofessionally leaking confidential training data to show that he’s not slow (which we already knew — he’s fast enough, just woefully out of shape with the first touch of a windmill), and generally acting like a tit.

The poor dear doesn’t think he can win his place in the team ahead of two half-proven youngsters, and wants to go some place where he’ll feel more loved. Like Serie A, for instance, a league which has been historically friendly to black athletes. At the start of the weekend, Juventus looked to be his most likely destination, but news of United pulling out of the Paulo Dybala deal means that option is dead at time of writing.

Today, there’s been a new twist. Lukaku has apparently turned up for training at his first club Anderlecht. Why he is training there instead of at his employer is unclear, but this may be a clear sign that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was so annoyed by Lukaku’s recent behavior that he told him to eff off. The United manager was uncharacteristically curt when asked about Lukaku’s social media faux pas on Saturday, and it seems that may have masked a deeper anger.

For all the hand-wringing over David de Gea and Paul Pogba over this summer, it turned out that Lukaku was the tiresome saga we didn’t see coming.