Romelu Lukaku netted a second-half hat-trick, as Everton secured a 3-0 win over Sunderland at the Stadium of Light on Monday night.
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Hat-trick hero Lukaku got all the goals thanks to a remarkable 11-minute second half blitz. “We had one or two opportunities ourselves”, he told Sky Sports. I know the players, I know the level they can achieve, and that is the level we saw in the second half, not the first half.
“We will be one of the teams who fight for European football”.
Speaking about the match-winner, Koeman always believed his goal drought would come to an end even if he was disappointed with the first 45 minutes from his team.
Sunderland had defended relatively strongly in the first half but gaps appeared here, there and everywhere for Lukaku to score two headers and a low strike in quick succession after grabbing his first on the hour.
Moyes said: “If there are things that we have done, it is we have worked on defending crosses and being in the right positions, but we certainly didn’t show it tonight”.
“Romelu is a fantastic striker and sometimes it’s hard when you’ve gone a long time not scoring for your club and everyone’s talking about that”.
“It was all about my fitness levels, they weren’t as good as I wanted them to be”.
Barkley’s demotion from the national team came after he was overlooked at Euro 2016, failing to play a single minute, and leaves him facing a fresh challenge.
I did not have doubts about Lukaku. You have to give Everton credit, they picked people out with a couple of really good balls.
“He has only been playing in the Premier League since January, but in that time we have already seen what he is capable of”.
But he struck three times in 11 minutes after the break as the magnificent Idrissa Gueye then Yannick Bolasie set him up before Kevin Mirallas released him for his clincher. We defended well but on the ball we lost the ball too many times.
And Bolasie capped his best performance of the season at the Stadium of Light with his first assist for the club when he found Lukaku at the back post.
Sunderland were again on the back foot at the start of the second-half.
“I might be exaggerating but I think, with a top center-forward, we would have been close to winning the league”.
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“The gaffer asked us to raise the tempo because the tempo we played at in the first half suited Sunderland”, Bolasie said.
