Chelsea are in the middle of a strange situation regarding manager, transfers and how the club is handling its important summer window.
For the second time in three years, Chelsea have embarrassingly missed out on the Champions League. Also for the second time in three years, they appear to be learning the minimal amount from that failure and seem poised to make some glaring errors moving forward.
When Chelsea first fell to tenth in the table, it was following a season in which they won the title and then decided to rest on their laurels. They fired Jose Mourinho, did not blame the players, and then hired Antonio Conte.
The following season, Antonio Conte grossly overachieved and won the division. What did Chelsea do next? Rested on their laurels and fell out of the Champions League again.
Chelsea appear to be doing the same thing this summer. They have dropped out of the Champions League. They appear to be blaming the manager and assessing the squad poorly.
Chelsea’s rot is from the core out. It is simply not a very good squad of players at the moment. It has a lot of B and C options and cast-offs who were good deals. That does not a very merry bunch of winners make.
Striker is one of the biggest missteps. Few are the biggest fan of Alvaro Morata. Was his first season in England great? No, it was not. That said the Premier League is harder to adapt to for some than others and he did alright.
He had 47 appearances and in that time he had 15 goals and 6 assists. That is 21 goal actions in 47 matches or roughly one every 2.23 games. That is not the worst record ever. Before Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo turned football into a video game and the Fifa-brigade took over, one goal every two matches was considered the best a striker could really be.
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In all fairness, he was apparently playing with a back injury. Say what you will about the lame-horse approach to claiming he had an injury later in the season and the whingeing. Neither are particularly palatable. That said if he had 21 goal actions in 32 games because he took off 15 for his injury, would that not be different?
Sure, he should have just sat if he was so injured it would hurt the team and if he announced himself fit then there are no real excuses there. It is what it is though and he was not 100 percent.
Secondly, this is pretty much who Morata is. People going on about how he is some sort of goal scoring genius are ridiculous. His only real time ever as a starter was during his time at Juventus. Statistically, during that time in Serie A and the Champions League over two years, he made 83 appearances and had 36 goal actions. That’s one goal action ever 2.3 appearances. Statistically, that means he was better at Chelsea.
The truth is Morata is just fine. He is a six foot, two inch lad who is not everybody’s cup of tea. He has been exactly who he has always been while he has been at Chelsea. Some have said this about Cesc Fabregas before but if Chelsea continues to collect players who’s boyhood clubs have taken (paid for the right even) to assess them twice over and still let them go then this is the area they will be in.
Morata should be given another season to see what he does with it. Chelsea did spend 70 million on him. An amount of money that he is not worth but at this point they have made their bed and need to hope he becomes the man they think he supposedly will be. If he grows, stops the whinging and whining every day, then that would be a good thing for the Blues.
Between Morata, Olivier Giroud and either Tammy Abraham or Michy Batshuayi, Chelsea have a perfectly ok group of strikers with whom they can gain their way into the top four and respect again.
The issue is pretty much everywhere else in the squad. The only real world class players in the team are Eden Hazard, Cesar Azpilicueta and N’Golo Kante. Marcos Alonso is a shade beneath them. As is Antonio Rudiger and for some people Andreas Christensen. The rest are either past their prime or mediocre players that Chelsea have built a squad out of. If Chelsea were to go out and spend 100 million pounds on a striker, they would be ignoring some very basic needs.
Both of Chelsea’s right wing backs were not good enough last season. Neither was one third of the back three and there is not a single good midfield partner for Kante somehow. Maybe Tiemoue Bakayoko comes good. And in the three man midfield, Fabregas is always lovely at passing.
It is, however, a complete joke that Chelsea should have to pick. Plenty of players are good at tackling, running and passing a ball all at once.
So the defence is not good, the midfield is a shambles and the right wing position is a mess too. Really, really wonderful. That returns to the original point. No, Alvaro Morata is not great but he is not the worst thing going on at the moment. If Chelsea were a ship, that ship would be chock full of holes and sinking and buying another striker would be like sewing a hole in the sails.
Chelsea have so many more dire issues than getting another striker. It is maddening to see all these rumors about Mauro Icardi and Gonzalo Higuain. Are they exciting? Of course. But Chelsea have got to get the basics done properly before they can do something like buy a record breaking striker for the second time in two years. It is absurd.
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It is very simple. Sort the manager situation, make the midfield competent (probably just by adding Ruben Loftus-Cheek), fix the defence (bring back Kurt Zouma) and buy one decent right back. Then maybe Chelsea can think about strikers again.