The transfer talk has been dominated by what and who Chelsea needs. With Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen leaving and possibly C...
The transfer talk has been dominated by what and who Chelsea needs. With Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen leaving and possibly Cesar Azpilicueta and Marcos Alonso to follow, Chelsea’s most pressing need is to buy some new defenders.
However, much of the focus has been on a striker to replace Romelu Lukaku, who is almost certain to join Inter Milan on loan this week. Chelsea has been strongly linked with Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and bar the highly unlikely rumour-fuelled transfers of Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar.
Few direct replacements for Lukaku seem to be on the shopping list. If Chelsea does sign Sterling and not a more like- for-like replacement in the form of a more traditional Number 9, it may give us some insight into where Thomas Tuchel sees the attack going.
And that would appear to be a more effective version of the fluid front three, like that deployed by Liverpool and Man City. Perhaps the days of the ‘big number 9’ are coming to an end, although Erland Haaland may have something to say about that, in truth, there are very few world-class strikers available now.
Throughout Chelsea’s trials and tribulations up front over the last couple of seasons, it seemed to me that the issue of Chelsea’s attacking players not being able to finish was not the only problem. There seemed to be no partnerships upfront.
Largely due to injury, Covid, loss of form and the need to rotate due to fatigue, Tuchel rarely got a chance to see which partnerships would work. Timo Werner and Kai Havertz; Mason Mount and Havertz or any combination between Werner, Havertz, Mount, Christian Pulisic, Hakim Ziyech and Callum Hudson-Odoi, and Lukaku with anyone.
There was perhaps, another area which failed to function when it came to either creating or scoring goals. If one takes Chelsea’s midfield last season to be Jorginho, Mateo Kovacic, N’Golo Kante, then excluding Jorginho’s nine goals from penalties, Chelsea’s midfield contributed just four goals and 15 assists between them.
If you add Reece James, Ben Chilwell and Marcos Alonso, who arguably played much of the time in the midfield as wing-backs, then we have another 14 goals and 16 assists to add. However, Reece James contributed six goals and ten assists on his own.
Whichever way you look at it, there appears to be a shortage of creativity, goals and assists coming from Chelsea’s midfield, and if that is the case, it begs the question as to why Chelsea are not searching high and low for a goal-scoring, creative midfielder.
They may, of course, be counting on Connor Gallagher to be that man next season, but even though Gallagher’s performances for Crystal Palace were highly impressive last season, becoming Chelsea’s main creative and goal- scoring midfielder in his first full season for the club might be a very big ask.
No comments:
Post a Comment