Manchester United's sale of Romelu Lukaku was a bigger risk than most people acknowledged.

Sure, the 26-year-old had suffered with second-season syndrome at Old Trafford, but he still finished the 2018-19 campaign as their second top scorer with 15 strikes in all competitions.

Say what you like about his first touch and dribbling, Lukaku knows how to find the back of the net and United flogged him without having a natural number nine to fill the gap.

To his credit, Marcus Rashford has started to step up in Lukaku's absence, yet you can't help but think that the Red Devils would have benefitted from having the big Belgian this season.

Don't believe us? Well, Lukaku's new form at Inter Milan has spoken for itself and he's already scored 10 goals in just 13 Serie A appearances.

Lukaku impressing at Inter

That's a better record than Cristiano Ronaldo, Gonzalo Higuain and Edin Dzeko, while Ciro Immobile is the only player to outdo him with an impressive 15 strikes.

So, how has Lukaku shaped up against his former United teammates? Firstly, he's scored at least double the amount of every player aside from Rashford, who has profited from three penalties.

But we want to get more specific. We've turned to WhoScored.com in order to assess Lukaku and United players using their average match ratings based on over 20 individual statistics.

Lukaku vs United squad

The result isn't a good one for United. Lukaku has averaged a rating of 7.49, the second best at Inter, across 1,078 minutes on the pitch and not a single United can player can match that.

Rashford has been United's best player with a rating of 7.27, followed by Scott McTominay and Paul Pogba, meaning that Lukaku has outperformed every squad member at Old Trafford this season.

That's got to sting. Check out the full statistical rankings of the United squad down below:

GIVEMESPORT's Kobe Tong says

This is a really difficult one.

The narrative that selling Lukaku was a no-brainer this summer was always heavy-handed and the Belgian has gone on to prove himself at Inter Milan this year. I expect his good form to continue.

The question that needs to be asked, however, is whether Lukaku was in the right frame of mind to press on for a third season at United.

For whatever reason, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had plans to force Lukaku out to the wing - perhaps because of his vision for Rashford - and you can see why that encouraged him to sever ties.

As a result, we must now gauge the wiseness of United's decision by tracking the respective scoring records of Lukaku and Rashford.

Solskjaer better hope that the latter competes with the former or he might be spending sleepless nights with his head on the chopping block.

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