Napoli might have a new hero in Romelu Lukaku.

The former Chelsea forward set up two goals and also scored as Napoli won 4-0 at Cagliari on Sunday for their third straight victory in the Serie A.

Defending champions Inter Milan narrowly avoided their first defeat of the season as they salvaged a 1-1 draw at Monza.

There are positive signs that, under new coach Antonio Conte, Napoli are starting to look more like the team that stormed to the league title in 2023 and less like the troubled side of last season.

One of the stars of that team was the now departed Victor Osimhen and he was replaced by Lukaku — reuniting the Belgium striker with Conte after the pair won Serie A at Inter in 2021.

“I strongly wanted Romelu, as I always have throughout my career, because we’re talking about an atypical player,” Conte said.

“He’s not yet at his top level but he’s a player who will become fundamental for us.”

Conte lost his first league match in charge but Napoli have won all three since then, scoring nine goals and conceding just one.

Lukaku scored on his debut last time out and was given his first start for Napoli on Sunday.

He proved dangerous from the start and set up the opener in the 18th minute, rolling Matteo Politano’s cutback across the area to Giovanni Di Lorenzo, whose effort was deflected by Cagliari defender Yerry Mina.

The match had to be suspended for around eight minutes in the first half because of crowd trouble but that didn’t disrupt the free-flowing action in an entertaining game in Sardinia.

Napoli had Alex Meret to thank for keeping it in the lead as the goalkeeper pulled off a number of great saves to deny Roberto Piccoli and Sebastiano Luperto and also finger-tipped a remarkable long-range strike from Razvan Marin off the crossbar.