Chelsea: Ongoing striker debates speak to change without improvement

The amount of debate fodder on the question of Alvaro Morata vs. Gonzalo Higuain leaves one conclusion in its wake: If you can’t tell which striker was better for Chelsea, Chelsea are no better off for having made the deal.

Those of you who follow us on Twitter may have seen the kerfuffle we kicked up yesterday by pointing out Alvaro Morata had scored his sixth goal for Atletico Madrid in their purportedly anti-football, overly-defensive set-up. This prompted a number of responses and counter-responses citing Morata’s goals per minute compared to Gonzalo Higuain’s, the relative strength of the Premier League and La Liga, the differences between Diego Simeone and Maurizio Sarri, and so on. Plenty of “because Morata was so great under Conte” made its way in among the more tolerable banter.

One argument was conspicuously missing from all the responses, though. Nobody ventured to say Gonzalo Higuain was having a better half season than Alvaro Morata had. By implication, then, no one was saying Chelsea are more offensively potent now than in the fall. At best, Higuain is no worse than Morata, and Chelsea are in the same place. And that’s coming from his (and Maurizio Sarri’s) defenders.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Many of the points people raised – however inartfully expressed – are valid for debate. Players will perform better under different coaches, in different tactical set-ups, in different leagues, in different countries and for a host of other regions. One player who scores more goals may also miss more chances, and some of them will be howlers. Another player whose movement is better suited for the coach’s tactics may score fewer goals because those tactics are unsuited for the league. Alvaro Morata may not be ideal for the physicality of the Premier League, but his own club’s fans did him no favours, either. Gonzalo Higuain may be a better striker for Maurizio Sarri, but the pace of the Premier League damages Higuain and Sarri as much as the brawn did Morata.

But at the root of any such debate there are a few objective, key measures of performance. For a striker, that would be goals. And the minimal difference in goals (and goals per minute) between Alvaro Morata and Gonzalo Higuain at Chelsea is the strongest evidence that Chelsea’s striker dealings in January were failures.

Change is the not purpose of hitting the transfer market. Improvement is. Whoever a team brings in must do the job he is brought in to do better than the player he is replacing.

As you probably know if you’ve been here before, we don’t have much to say in favour of Jorginho. We will say this, though: He is doing the job he was brought here to do, and is doing that job more precisely than Cesc Fabregas would have.

No, this is not a reversal of everything I have said on this site and Twitter for months. Maurizio Sarri wanted Jorginho to play 100+ one-touch passes from the base of midfield every game. Sarri looks to Jorginho to play a traditional Italian r*****a role in a 4-3-3, setting a metronomic tempo for the team’s passing without any pressure to make a few assists per season.

Do we think that’s a worthy goal? No. Do we think Chelsea are weaker for having replaced Cesc Fabregas with Jorginho? Yes. Is Jorginho doing the job he was brought in to do better than Cesc Fabregas would have? Would Fabregas have been able (or even willing) to play 100+ one-touch, no-look, repetitive, sideways, average-length-under-10-yards passes per game? Yes and no, respectively.

Maurizio Sarri – and by extension, Chelsea – are getting what they wanted to get from Jorginho. And they are getting it beyond what his predecessor could have done.

No one can say the same about Gonzalo Higuain and Alvaro Morata. Chelsea are getting near enough the same output – shots, goals, goals per minute – from the two strikers. Morata had more howlers from six yards out, but at least he was getting in those good positions. Higuain may have a slight edge in goals per minute, but only one of those goals came against a team who will be in the Premier League next season.

Pointing out that Alvaro Morata was no better under Antonio Conte than he was under Maurizio Sarri while also saying Gonzalo Higuain is as good under Maurizio Sarri as Alvaro Morata was is acknowledging Chelsea changed managers and strikers to little effect. Both changes prompted change, not improvement.

Change without improvement is a defining characteristic of the Maurizio Sarri era, not just in how Sarri is working with this team but in the sentiment around the club, including the clamor that brought him to Stamford Bridge. The Blues are different in many ways, but it is hard to find any in which they are better.