Romelu Lukaku has been backed to be a big success at Manchester United by Stoke City manager Mark Hughes.
Hughes, himself a former Old Trafford centre-forward star, as well as an ex-Everton player, believes the striker will impress if reports of an accepted £75million United bid lead to a completed transfer.
Lukaku’s impressive Premier League scoring record has the Stoke manager confident the Belgium international – also a reported target of Chelsea – will adapt to a new challenge at Jose Mourinho’s side, as the United boss attempts to replace Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
“In fairness to the boy, for a number of years, he has been scoring regular goals at the top level of British football,” Hughes told reporters.
“It [United] will be a different challenge for him. Everton are a good club – I’ve played at both clubs.
“Everton are very much a family club, United, clearly since I left, it’s gone on to become even bigger on the world stage and it’s a huge entity now.
“Maybe he will find a little bit of a difference in that, but his day-to-day work will be similar and I’m sure he will be a great success there.
“It’s been in the offing for a while it seems. There’s been a lot of discussion in terms of which club he was going to go to.
“There’s been a lot of talk about Chelsea but it looks like he’s going to go to Manchester United.
“Given that Manchester United have lost Zlatan, they clearly had to address that and they have gone for Lukaku.”
Hughes suspects Everton’s transfer-market splurge, which has seen them bring in the likes of Jordan Pickford, Michael Keane, Davy Klaassen and Sandro Ramirez, has been made in anticipation of a windfall from selling Lukaku.
He continued: “From the outside it looks as though Everton have already been spending the money they are going to accumulate. It is a big chunk of money, you have to say.”
Lukaku scored 25 Premier League goals last season, a total that saw him finish second to Tottenham star Harry Kane in the scoring charts.
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