Former Chelsea striker Carlton Cole says manager Thomas Tuchel needs to adjust his system for Romelu Lukaku - rather than the other way around.

Since the turn of the year, Lukaku has failed to score in the Premier League, while often finding himself left out of Tuchel's starting XI.

"The situation is not down to Lukaku, it's down to the scouting network, it's not his fault," Cole told Mirror Football. "He's never been a back to goal sort of guy, he's always been on the shoulder.

"If you see all his goals last season, or most of them, it's down the channels - that's what he does. You can't hate on him for that, that's his strength and he plays to it. Defenders never like facing their own goal and he made them do that all the time. Chelsea need to change the tactics to suit him. If they play a deep line and counter attack then maybe that will suit him.

"We saw that against Aston Villa early on this season. He came on and he was just a beast of a forward, just unbelievable, and they were so scared of him. It's not that he was holding the ball up and being a nuisance, it's that he was on the run, starting from deep, they put him in with a through ball, Lukaku gets on the end of it, gets in the box and is a problem always for any defender."