Chelsea’s lack of offence against 10-man Arsenal caused a surge in the Edinson Cavani transfer rumours. The Blues need to take the blinders off as they weigh this possibility, and ensure everyone else does, as well.
Edinson Cavani will be 33 years old next month, is a prolific goalscorer outside of England, is demanding what would be the club’s highest wages on top of a large transfer fee and is a January wantaway. It would only be surprising if Chelsea were not linked to him. But even though Chelsea’s recent striker history is a series of well-known cautionary tales, many of the lessons learned from those failed-nine’s are absent from the chatter around Cavani.
The first question anyone asks, almost obligatorily, about any transfer is whether they can handle the Premier League. The physicality of the English game is most frequently cited, but the tactical demands of the league are worth considering, too. Different leagues stack up in different ways against the Premier League for such comparisons: the Bundesliga is the most similar physically (especially in pace of play) and tactically, for example, while Serie A is the most defensively oriented and therefore a useful reference for defenders and goal-scorers.
A player’s record in the Champions League is another guide. The more experience a player has in the Champions League, the more adept he is at playing against the wide varieties of football one encounters there. Success in the Champions League rounds out the picture begun by what he does domestically; and it speaks directly to one of Chelsea’s main goals.
No one ever points to Ligue 1 as being comparable or transferable to the Premier League on any dimension, for obvious reasons: it’s Paris Saint-Germain steamrolling the league and cup with nary a drop of sweat, and a rotating cast of other teams vying for and dipping in and out of the other European slots.
Most of Cavani’s reputation is based on his play at Paris Saint-Germain, where he has played since 2013. Like the billion of dollars of players he has lined up with over the last seven years, Cavani has won five leagues and five cups by trouncing the likes of Nice, Lille, Monaco and Saint-Etienne: four clubs who have qualified for European play but also spent time in the bottom half of the table while PSG did what PSG does.
Being a PSG player, Cavani has never seen anything beyond the quarterfinals of the Champions League. He did not make it any further with Napoli in his two years in Italy.
Cavani averages a goal every 109 minutes domestically with Paris Saint-Germain, comparable to his rate of one every 113 minutes in Serie A with Napoli. He slows down to one every 137 minutes in the Champions League.
By comparison, the man he will succeed and replace at Chelsea – Olivier Giroud – improved from 171 minutes per goal domestically to 145 minutes per goal in Europe across his career in west and north London. Cavani has a better domestic rate, but Giroud played in a more difficult league. Giroud came alive in Europe, Cavani receded, much like PSG as a whole.
His shallow success as part of the most disproportionately wealthy team in the weakest and least transferable of Europe’s big five leagues; his lack of experience in a tight domestic campaign; his lack of experience in the later rounds of European competition; his decrease in performance in Europe, mimicking that of his club’s; his lack of recent experience in any league more comparable to the Premier League…
If this were any other player, these factors would raise so many red flags you’d think you were at a Bernie Sanders rally. Each one can be cited about at least one of Chelsea’s previous failed strikers.
But let’s say Chelsea go through with this deal regardless. They need to be incredibly blunt with Cavani, and he needs to do the same in return.
Cavani would be a short-term fix. At 33 and £325,000 a week, he is not a player for the future, not in football terms, not in financial terms. He will have to understand that Tammy Abraham is the striker for the present, the short-term and long-term. Unless Abraham is hurt, Cavani will not be the regular starting lone striker.
Cavani will have to know that if anyone is going to be Abraham’s strike partner beyond this season, it will be Timo Werner or someone like him.
He can not have any illusions, and there will be no point in going through the playacting of saying “I’ve always wanted to play in England, and landing at a club like Chelsea is the greatest thing I could hope for at this stage in my career.”
No slick announcement video, no fan reaction pieces. Chelsea should not even sell his kit in the club store.
If Marina Granovskaia wants to top her record from last year, she will get Cavani to agree to a nominal salary at the base of a pay-per-goal wage structure. Let him have the option to earn even more than his agent is currently demanding by doing an extreme amount of the only thing Chelsea are paying for him to do. They can make the pay-per-goal structure as flat or as detailed as possible, e.g., winning goals and Champions League goals pay more. Heck, they can even tie in the underlying stats and pay him more for a goal relative to the expected goal (xG) of the shot.
He will be at Stamford Bridge for only one reason and only one half season. Why not pay him accordingly as a mercenary, a prostitute, a commission-based travelling merchant.
No one can afford to have any illusions about the Edinson Cavani situation. Everyone needs to be clear-eyed about the risks, which starts by acknowledging there are risks, amongst which are the similarities he shares with other failed Chelsea strikers. If his record and availability are enough to make those risks palatable, then everyone needs to know exactly why this transfer is happening and where it fits into everyone’s bigger picture.
The Frank Lampard era seems to have done away with a lot of the subterfuge and puffery that clouded previous episodes in Chelsea’s recent history. They should make this the apotheosis of their newfound transparency.