Four reasons why Chelsea should target Dusan Vlahovic

Chelsea has targeted Erling Haaland as its ideal next striker signing, and rightly so. However, the financial requirements of completing that deal would make even the most frugal of club hierarchies hesitant. Haaland’s Borussia Dortmund is demanding an offer of £150 million to even begin negotiation. This figure is not even including the salary requirement that would be just as massive. Yes, a majority of Chelsea fans want Haaland to be announced—none more so than myself—but it is reasonable for the club to be hesitant and even reluctant considering the money involved.

Chelsea does have a scoring problem, and there are several ways the club can go about fixing it. For one, the Blues do not create many good goal scoring opportunities for a team that wants to challenge for titles. They create some though, and if they cannot create loads for their striker to score a lot by converting a small portion of them, they can perhaps get a striker who is accustomed to not getting loads of chances, but still scores a lot.

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Fiorentina’s Dusan Vlahovic is a 21-year-old Serbian striker who netted 21 times last season in Serie A. He has spent three seasons in the Italian league and has made 30 or more appearances for two seasons in a row. When we measure his goal record against some other factors, his talent comes to the fore.

Here’s four reasons why Chelsea should seriously consider bringing in the Serbian youngster:

1. Goal scoring record

Vlahovic scored a wide variety of goals in his 21-goal season, netting three assists, at Fiorentina. His awareness in attacking situations is obvious. His movement in the box is reminiscent of Haaland. His average distance of shots from goal is about 14.1 yards per fbref; this shows that he doesn’t just shoot for the sake of it. He has a goal per game rate of 0.57 over 37 games, which is outstanding.

He contributed to 45 percent of his team’s league goals in the Serie A this season, helping Fiorentina to a 13th-place finish. He has accumulated an xG of 18.48—from which he’s scored 21 goals—and a non-penalty xG of 13.9, from which he’s scored 15 non-penalty goals. His penalty technique is really good, as well, scoring six out of an attempted six, including a cheeky chip. Fiorentina is not amongst the bests team in Italy as shown by its league standing, the next highest goalscorer in the team has five. This indicates that Vlahovic is very much the focal point of that team and how it plays, such that a large chunk of the chances the side creates fall to him. It’s easy to see why.

2. Goal scoring record relative to big chance conversion

Fiorentina does not create a lot of big chances. However, a lot of the big chances that were created fell to the Serbian, and he did not waste them. La Viola created (either through individual skill or opposition errors) 1.7 big chances per game this season—not an alarming tally. That means Fiorentina created 65 big chances in the league in a 38 game season, six of which were penalties. That’s 59 non-penalty big chances throughout an entire league campaign.

Vlahovic scored 21 goals, but of those 21 goals, six were penalties and 13 of them were big chances that were converted. According to SofaScore, Vlahovic missed 12 big chances for Fiorentina last season. This means that Vlahovic had access to 25 big chances and converted 52 percent of them, which is an impressive proportion. Vlahovic had access to 42 percent of Fiorentina’s non-penalty big chances last season and converted majority of those, as well. For comparison, Werner has access to 23 non-penalty big chances last season and converted just 22 percent of them, scoring just six league goals.

Vlahovic’s big chance conversion rate is encouraging as that big chance production is comparable with that of the Blues, who created just 2.4 big chances per game this season. Vlahovic’s superb movement to get into comfortable shooting positions is evidence of how instrumental he was in Fiorentina’s chance creation. Vlahovic also takes 2.3 shots per game, the same as Werner.

3. Goal scoring record relative to other high scoring No. 9s in same league

Vlahovic is one of four strikers to score 20+ goals in the Serie A this season. The other three are Cristiano Ronaldo (29), Romelu Lukaku (24) and Luis Muriel (22), who play for Juventus, Inter Milan and Atalanta respectively. The clubs they play for will become important information very quickly, as those clubs created 3.5, 3.1 and 3.1 big chances per game respectively. By comparison, Vlahovic’s Fiorentina created 1.7 per contest.

This shows that Vlahovic did not have nearly as much access to big chances as the other three did, and he was still able to match them (for the most part) in goals. Every other player with 20+ goals, also missed more big chances than Vlahovic, except Muriel, who converted 11 non-penalty big chances and missed the same number. The indication is that Vlahovic is doing a lot more with a lot less to work with, and considering Chelsea created about the same amount of big chances for Werner as Fiorentina did for Vlahovic, a 52 percent non-penalty big chance conversion rate is promising.

4. Raw skill

Vlahovic has a stupendous technique. He scored the majority of his goals with his left foot and his movement in the box is quite extraordinary. The youngster works hard to free himself in the box so that his teammates can find him in space. Despite all of this, Vlahovic is not the finished product yet, he still has a lot of work to do in terms of ball control.

He also has to work on his heading technique as he already has a height advantage over most players. He wins a fair amount of aerial duels befitting his height, but not the expected proportion. Vlahovic won 3.1 aerial duels per game in the Serie A this season, but only had a 44 percent aerial duel success rate, which is poor for a player as tall as he. He also has a lot of work to do in terms of ground duels. He wins a solid number of ground duels per game (3.0), but at a 39 percent success rate. These are things he can work on as he continues to develop though. At Chelsea, he could learn about ground duels from Thiago Silva and aerials from Kurt Zouma, as these two are superb in those areas.

It is worth noting that Vlahovic has spent three year in the top flight and has hit the 20-goal mark just once in those three seasons. However, there is enough to suggest that he can only get better from here. Chelsea has to start buying diamonds in the rough, that’s how Dortmund landed Haaland. People were asking if he could do it in any of Europe’s top five leagues, Dortmund decided to find out.

Chelsea could get Vlahovic for around £35 to 40 million and if things fall into place, the Blues could be in a position to sell him for over £100 million in the future. Don’t forget, Haaland had half a season of brilliance in the Austrian Bundesliga and Champions League, but there was enough to indicate that this wasn’t just a one-season wonder. Vlahovic’s is a similar case. His technique and movement indicate that he’d be a weapon against any defense, he can also play different styles and he primarily plays in a 3-5-2 at Fiorentina. He would be able to fit seamlessly into Thomas Tuchel’s 3-4-2-1 if Tuchel puts the right pieces in place.

Do you think the Blues should chase Vlahovic? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter!