Traditionally, teams need the striker to be the main goal scorer. But if Chelsea is getting goals from all over, it may not matter if the strikers cannot.
To get out of ahead of it, Chelsea’s three strikers are not doing too badly this preseason on paper. Michy Batshuayi and Olivier Giroud both have two goals and Tammy Abraham has one. Chelsea has played six preseason games, but none of those three featured in all of them and none of them have played a full 90. So again, on paper, their goals to minute ratio is just about acceptable for a striker on a top six Premier League side.
Of course, in practice things look a bit different. None of the three have truly risen above the rest. Giroud looks suited for a game where Chelsea is dominating possession (by no means a necessary part of Frank Lampard’s set up) but he can also score out of thin air regardless. Michy Batshuayi is the most pure poacher Chelsea has and he is clearly very hungry to prove himself. Tammy Abraham seems to be the most rounded striker, but that also sees him wander away from goal a bit too often. They all have goals, but none of them really feels like the goal scorer Chelsea needs.
But at the same time, Chelsea is getting goals from all over the pitch. Lampard’s setup does not require the striker to be the last one to touch the ball before it hits the net; it can be practically anyone on the field and preseason has shown that. So if Chelsea is getting goals from all over, does it matter if the striker is getting few?
That is not exactly a new phenomenon for the Blues either. In the seasons since Roman Abramovich bought the club, strikers have only been the leading goal scorer (in all competitions) in nine out of the 16 seasons. It should come as no surprise that Lampard himself was the top scorer in four seasons which goes a long way towards explaining his philosophy.
Lampard wants his side to try things. Conventional wisdom generally says long shots and long passes are low yield events, but that does not always meet the reality of the game. Take the preseason match against Red Bull Salzburg for example. Chelsea had five goals, only one of which came from a striker. One was a long shot and three others were started by some sort of long pass creating a dangerous situation. While it would be nice to have a striker on the end of those, does it matter if it is one of the band of three finding the space?
At least based on the current preseason, Lampard’s tactics are less about releasing the striker or finding the striker in a pocket of space, but more about luring the opponent in and letting anyone snatch a pass up on a ball in behind. It could be, in the case of Pulisic’s goals, that Abraham had pulled players away from him. The end result is a goal so the how is less important.
Chelsea strikers are going to be judged this season as they always are. But the Blues are not a club that has ever really worried about who has put the ball in the back of the net. For now, the wingers and the 10 are collectively finding goals far more than the strikers are. While goal scoring is the metric by which strikers are judged, this season it may be better to judge them on the teams total score and how they helped that along.