Callum Hudson-Odoi hopes ‘amazing’ Romelu Lukaku can keep inspiring Chelsea

Callum Hudson-Odoi has urged Chelsea to continue supplying Romelu Lukaku as they look to reel in Manchester City.

The striker came off the bench to inspire Chelsea to a 3-1 comeback win at Aston Villa on Sunday.

Lukaku, who has struggled with an ankle problem and also caught Covid-19 recently, scored his first Premier League goal since September.

He netted 11 minutes after being introduced at the break and won a late penalty for Jorginho to wrap up the points.

Chelsea are third in the Premier League, level on points with Liverpool and six points behind leaders City, and Hudson-Odoi knows Lukaku can make the difference.

“Rom is an amazing player. His strengths are very good for us up front. He knows how to hold the ball up so we can play around him really well,” the winger told the club’s official site.

“When we get the balls into the box, he’s always there to try and get a header or control it and set it back for the player behind him.

“He’s a massive player for us and we have to keep going, keep feeding him the ball in and around the box and hopefully he can find the back of the net.

“Obviously we never want to concede goals. In football, when you keep a clean sheet, it’s the most amazing thing to know that you’ve defended your box really well.

“When we went down the reaction was really positive from the boys. We wanted to try and get chances, create goals as soon as possible. We kept pushing and pushing and got the penalty. It was a good feeling, Jorgi scored it.

“We kept pushing. We wanted to be more relentless, more creative which we did very well in the second half as well, so it was good.”

Villa impressed in the first half with Reece James’ own goal being cancelled out by Jorginho’s first penalty, but they could not live with Lukaku after the break as boss Steven Gerrard watched from home after testing positive for coronavirus.

Midfielder Douglas Luiz told the club’s official site: “We played well, we worked hard and we can take a lot of positives. We had good moments in the game but it was two penalties that caused us defeat.

“We know they’re a really competitive team and we know that they have a lot of quality, they have attacking quality, but we have our quality as well.

“Unfortunately we weren’t able to get the three points.”