Man Utd's Lukaku warnings that Chelsea ignored have come back to bite them

Romelu Lukaku has enjoyed a unique career which has endured its fair share of ups and downs.

Aged just 28, he has already represented six clubs - with this his second stint at Chelsea - and has notched up over 300 senior goals across his career.

The fallout from his recent interviews have divided opinion in football, with some quarters praising him for what they perceive to be an open and honest interview; with others condemning the striker's seeming undermining of his club and manager.

Of course, this is not the first time in Lukaku's career that he has upset fans of the club he represented - and on each previous occasion, the result has been a transfer away.

That may not happen at Stamford Bridge, where he may find peace with Thomas Tuchel and force his way back into the starting line-up, scoring goals and firing the Blues to success.

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If this is to happen, Chelsea will have to learn the lessons from Lukaku's fallout at Manchester United - whom he left in 2019.

Few tears were shed by the United faithful when the Belgian striker departed, having never hit the heights at Old Trafford and a public falling out with the club.

After leaving United, Lukaku gave an interview where he outlined how he felt that the club did not 'protect' him from the media glare - which has seemingly repeated itself this week at Chelsea.

"A lot of stuff has been said where I didn't feel protected," Lukaku said in the aftermath of his exit from Manchester.

"I felt like a lot of rumours, 'Rom going there', 'they don't want Rom', and nobody came out to shut it down.

"It was for a good three, four weeks. I'm waiting for someone to come out and shut it down. It didn't happen.

"I had my conversation, told them it was better to go our separate ways. If you don't want to protect somebody, all these rumours come out. I just wanted you to say 'Rom is going to fight for his place', but it never happened for four, five months.

"It was all, 'he's got to go, he doesn't deserve to be there'. Well okay, then I want to go now. There is fighting for your position, but also being somewhere that people want you to be.

"If you're happy, you find a way, it doesn't matter if you're on the bench or starting.

"But nobody told me that was the situation, so I thought for two, three weeks to analyse, see all this s*** coming out in the media. Who leaks it? Not me. Not my agent. I see it on my phone come out of nowhere.

"I told them it's not good for me to be at a place where I'm not wanted. We're not stupid. They consider us dumb, but we are not dumb, we know who is doing leaks and stuff. I told them, you can't be working like this, it's better for me to go now."

Prior to his increasingly inevitable departure from Old Trafford, Lukaku leaked data from United training in an attempt to end negative comments about his speed.

The Belgian uploaded a video showing every United player's maximum speed following a drill in training - which was not authorised by the club to be shared.

The data showed that only Diogo Dalot finished - with a spead of 36.43km/hour - finished ahead of Lukaku, who clocked in at 36.25km/h.

Tahith Chong, Marcus Rashford and Daniel James completed the top five, with Luke Shaw shown to rank bottom of the data - behind Juan Mata and Nemanja Matic.

Shaw responded to Lukaku via Twitter saying that he was only asked to go at 70 percent, while Lukaku was officially sold to Inter the following week.

It was an incident that undermined United and risked hanging several of his teammates out to dry.

Chelsea must be wary of how Lukaku's career at Old Trafford fell apart and must seek to take control of his situation to avoid a similar development at Stamford Bridge.