Chelsea: Results across Europe mock the Blues’ January striker deals

With Easter still a few weeks away, Chelsea are finding out the eggs they laid back in the January transfer window are already spoiled, as many of us foresaw.

One mark of a banter club is when results around the league and even around Europe heap hilarity onto an already embarrassing situation. So pervasive and widespread is the incompetence of such clubs, hardly a ball can be kicked without reminding us of an errant deal, a flopped player or an inexplicably scuttled opportunity. Chelsea are now just such a club.

Two events in two different countries on Tuesday put a spotlight on Chelsea’s January bungling of their striker business. In Italy, Krzysztof Piatek scored his seventh goal of the season for Serie A. That makes him Milan’s leading goal scorer for the entire season, even though Piatek only arrived on January 23. His goal moves him ahead of the man he replaced: Gonzalo Higuain.

Piatek’s seven goals came over the course of 752 minutes in 10 appearances. Higuain needed 1280 minutes in 15 appearances to score six and assist one.

Between his first half of the season in Genoa and now at AC Milan, Piatek has 20 league goals. That places him between 36-year old Fabio Quagliarella and 34-year old Cristiano Ronaldo at the top of Serie A’s scoring table.

As an aside, that two of the top three scorers in Serie A are in their mid-30’s and four of the top 10 are over 30 should be yet another indication that success in Serie A – coaching, goal-scoring, regista-ing – is not going to carry over to the Premier League.

The other event took place much closer to Chelsea, not far away, in fact, in a quasi-London derby. Watford defeated Fulham 4-1, relegating Fulham to the Championship next season. This result made it official that all of Gonzalo Higuain’s goals for Chelsea – all three of them – have been against teams who will not be in the top flight next season. Hearts will sink on the south coast if he manages to score today against Brighton.

We predicted several times Chelsea would be the biggest loser of their January striker moves. So far, Krysztof Piatek and Gonzalo Higuain are doing their part to prove us right.

Alvaro Morata is, too. Although he did not score on Tuesday against Girona, he had one of Atletico Madrid’s best chances before their opener. Morata made a perfectly timed run – staying onside – to be one-on-one with Girona’s keeper as a long-ball pass came over his shoulder. Morata made clean contact on the volley, but sent it over the net.

While his detractors will say “That’s so Morata,” he created a beautiful chance from nothing and showed incredible talent just to get to the point where he could send the ball over the bar. As my newest colleague Olaoluwa Nwobodo said yesterday, creating chances like that is at least half of what teams need from their strikers. This was the sort of movement and technique Morata provides.

No one has accused Gonzalo Higuain of having any such movement and technique in years, and he has done little with what he has left at Chelsea.

Of the players in Chelsea’s January striker shuffle, the only laggard is Michy Batshuayi. He has one fewer goal than Higuain, despite being on the least offensively-potent team of those under discussion here.

Chelsea have become that club that can come to the table holding a stacked deck of cards and still deal themselves the joker and a pair of deuces. In the weeks ahead, results at Stamford Bridge and across Europe will provide regular reminders of how, at every opportunity, Chelsea took the road less travelled, because everyone else was smart enough to take the other road.