Why did Manchester United sign Romelu Lukaku and not Alvaro Morata?

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As soon as Manchester United announced that they were not going to provide Zlatan Ibrahimovic with a new contract, the club was immediately being linked with a series of top strikers that could potentially replace the Swedish frontman. And two names that came up more than the others were that of Alvaro Morata and Romelu Lukaku.

While United had shown initial interest in Lukaku but it was reported that the Belgian has his heart set on returning to Stamford Bridge. And so United went ahead with the Alvaro Morata deal. Reports from Spain even suggested that Morata was so close to signing for United that he had even dyed his hair red. But that was eventually not meant to be. The Red Devils suddenly shifted their focus to Romelu Lukaku and signed him up – as Chelsea looked on helplessly.

We take a look at some of the possible reasons as to why Jose Mourinho might have chosen Romelu Lukaku over Alvaro Morata:

Lukaku has proved himself:

According to Gary Pallister, Jose Mourinho’s primary reason for signing Romelu Lukaku over Morata was the fact that the 24-year-old Belgian has proved himself on the Premier League stage. While the likes of Morata and Lacazette are fine talents in their own right but they are yet to jump into the whirlpool that is the English Premier League and swim out safely at the other end.

Morata has found it really tough to break into the first team at Real Madrid, where he was mostly playing second fiddle to Karim Benzema. And so was the case during his Juventus days. But Lukaku had been scoring goals for fun ever since his left Chelsea. Since 2012, the Belgian International has scored 71 goals in just 133 appearances which is no small feat as per the Premier League standards.

Read: Will Mino Raiola bring in another player at Man Utd.

Mourinho got bored with the waiting game:

Another possible reason why Mourinho did not sign Morata might have been the fact that the United boss just got fed up with the amount of time that it was taking for the deal to be done. Almost every week a new report week would come out claiming that Morata was on the verge of moving to Manchester but very soon it would fizzle out.

Many people also suggested that Real Madrid were purposefully making the deal complicated so that they could ask for David De Gea in a swap deal. And Mourinho was not entirely ready to part ways with his keeper.

The Zlatan effect:

In the previous season, Man Uts signed Zlatan Ibrahimovic from PSG and the Swede almost took the all of the goal scoring responsibility upon himself. He was someone who would dominate a game, bully the defenders and conjure goals out of thin air. So now that Zlatan was no longer a United player, Mourinho wanted to bring in someone who could do all those things. And sadly Alvaro Morata did not quite fit the brief. The Spaniard is in no sense a bully, he is more of a team player. And frankly United did not want that.

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