Mauricio Pochettino said both sides must take their share of the blame for the long-running standoff between Chelsea and Romelu Lukaku with the striker’s future seemingly no closer to being resolved. The Belgium international, who cost £97.5million when he signed from Inter just over two years ago but has not played for the club since May 2022 and has not been given a squad number this season, has made clear his desire to leave. But despite interest from the Serie A side in taking him on a loan deal as they did last season, Chelsea have been unwilling to consider a temporary move and would rather he was sold, though they are keen to recoup as much as possible of the hefty transfer fee they paid. Pochettino has only one recognised striker available for Sunday’s visit to West Ham, summer signing Nicolas Jackson, though the manager said he expects academy product Armando Broja to play a role this season once he has recovered from the ACL injury that has kept him out since December. On Lukaku’s prospects of being reintegrated into the team, he said that nothing has changed since pre-season, despite the injury to summer signing Christopher Nkunku and the club’s failure to lure Michael Olise from Crystal Palace this week. “The situation (with Lukaku) was clear before we arrived between the club and the player,” he said. “For us, there’s nothing to do. “It’s not only one side. It’s two sides. It’s two sides to try to find the best solution. You cannot put it only on the club, the situation. It’s both sides. The situation is where it is because of two sides. It’s like when you have a player in or a player out. It’s because both sides arrive to an agreement. “The situation is how it is, we cannot change. We were informed before we signed, the situation on every single player, and after we signed we had the squad we had. I think it is so clear, nothing changed. “If there’s something to inform, the club will inform.” My mind is to come back to Europe in the Champions League next season. We cannot accept another idea. Mauricio Pochettino Chelsea’s difficulty with strikers predates Pochettino’s arrival at Stamford Bridge. The team struggled for goals last season, while ex-Arsenal and Barcelona forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was largely sidelined having been signed under former boss Thomas Tuchel but considered surplus to requirements by subsequent managers Graham Potter and Frank Lampard. He left to join Marseille in July but Pochettino has inherited the uncertainty surrounding Lukaku from his predecessors. “For me I need to be focussed on the team,” he added. “To try to perform. We cannot spend energy on a situation that was clear before we started here.” The manager also reiterated his objectives for the season that nothing short of qualification for the Champions League will be deemed acceptable. Chelsea finished 12th last season and missed out on Europe for only the second time since 1996, but with £350m spent so far on summer recruits there is expectation from Pochettino that the gap to the top four must be closed quickly, with winning the Premier League title his next aim. “My mind is to come back to Europe in the Champions League next season,” he said. “We cannot accept another idea (other than) to put the club in the position they deserve to be. “If someone is thinking in this way, I would be very worried, in this training ground or in Stamford Bridge. “Today it’s so early to think too much on this situation. The idea is to win the Premier League. If someone has a different idea, it’s better to tell us, and we’ll say maybe we’ll find some solution. “If we can create and perform in the way that we expect from day one, that is a process that we need to build. The mentality needs to be to win and to expect to play in the Champions League and to win the Premier League. If not, we will fail. “The challenge is to create the mentality that all is possible.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Julian Alvarez gives Premier League champions a hard-fought win over Newcastle Reece Prescod accuses UK Athletics of ’emotional blackmail’ after withdrawal ‘It is obvious why we signed a striker’ says United boss after loss at Tottenham

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Max Verstappen equalled Formula One’s all-time record of nine consecutive race wins in his home Dutch Grand Prix. The Red Bull driver matched Sebastian Vettel’s achievement and here, the PA news agency looks at how he compares. Cloud nine Verstappen has won 11 of this season’s 13 races – with team-mate Sergio Perez taking the other two as the duo surpassed the great McLaren pairing of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost’s run of 11 straight wins in 1988. Since Perez’s win in Azerbaijan on April 30, Verstappen has won the Miami, Monaco, Spanish, Canadian, Austrian, British, Hungarian, Belgian and now Dutch Grands Prix. He won from ninth on the grid in Florida, passing Perez with nine laps to go, and his team judged the rain correctly to hold off Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso in Monaco. Dominant wins in Spain and Canada brought him level with Senna’s career tally of 41 race wins, which he quickly overhauled in Austria. Victory at Silverstone took him 99 points clear in the drivers’ standings and he shot past pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton on the run to the first corner in Hungary before clinching Red Bull the record for consecutive team wins. His attention could then turn to the individual landmark and after surging through from sixth on the grid at Spa, he returned from the summer break to beat Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso in a six-lap dash to the chequered flag to match Vettel’s streak, set in 2013. History repeats for Red Bull Vettel set the record – also driving for Red Bull, for whom Adrian Newey has been in post as chief technical officer on both occasions – when he won the final nine races of 2013 to surge clear of Alonso and win the title. His run began in Belgium, where he overtook Hamilton early on and was untroubled thereafter, before dominant wins in Italy, Singapore and Korea and a strategic success in Japan. The German clinched the title in India and added further wins in Abu Dhabi and the United States before a season-ending success in Brazil made it nine in a row and 13 for the season. Alberto Ascari has a claim to a share of the record, having won the last six races of the 1952 season and his first three starts of 1953. The run was interrupted by Ascari not entering the Indianapolis 500, which at the time was part of the drivers’ championship and was won by American Bill Vukovich. Michael Schumacher won seven in a row in 2004, as did Nico Rosberg at the end of 2015 and the start of his 2016 title-winning season. Schumacher also had a run of six across the 2000 and 2001 seasons while Hamilton’s longest run is five wins, as was Verstappen’s before his current streak. Verstappen is on track to be the first driver ever to win over 80 per cent of races in a season – beating Ascari’s 75 per cent in 1952, when there were only eight races in total – while he has won almost 94 per cent of the maximum points available with 339 of a possible 362 so far. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Max Verstappen reveals Sebastian Vettel prediction as he closes on GP record run Max Verstappen is one of the best drivers in F1 history – Lando Norris Daniel Ricciardo ruled out of Dutch Grand Prix after breaking wrist in practice

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