Everton manager Roberto Martinez has stated that the club have to be very careful regarding Romelu Lukaku's fitness.

Lukaku missed a large portion of Everton's pre-season following the summer World Cup and his fitness suffered after he was thrown straight into the starting line-up at the start of the season.

The 21-year old has since been struggling with various injury problems throughout the campaign and now manager Martinez has stated that Everton will be handling the striker's fitness very carefully from now till the start of the international summer so as to avoid a repeat.

"We are in a position where, this summer, there is another international fixture so we need to be very careful with Rom and make sure he is fully fit and make sure he doesn't take any niggles into the summer because that could be really dangerous," Martinez said.

"The Swansea game on Saturday was probably 48 hours too early. But we are not talking about big margins. Rom was desperate to play but if we can get him ready for the next six games then we can feel the benefit going into the next campaign."