Better late than never for Chelsea to get serious this window

Over and over, it has been brought up that Chelsea has a bad case of tunnel vision in transfer windows. They put all eyes and efforts on one player and by the time they find out that player is unavailable, they scramble.

That’s what is happening now, in a way. Chelsea has seemingly given up on Erling Haaland and they are going all in on Romelu Lukaku. It’s better late than never.

See, normally Chelsea saves all this until closer to the end of the window. It’s good that the club saw the calendar go over to August and kicked themselves into gear. The Haaland price has been steady for weeks and with no movement, it was high time to go for someone else.

That someone else has become Lukaku. Earlier in the window, Lukaku was a top choice but Inter’s manager switcharoo, sale of Achraf Hakimi, and Lukaku’s overall time in Italy led to all parties saying no. Chelsea switched gears to go all in for Haaland but they’ve now reversed course.

There is seemingly a belief that Inter and Lukaku can be convinced in ways Dortmund couldn’t be with Haaland. But, time is short, so the Blues are having to go big. 100 million Euros with Marcos Alonso either included or on top of that is a steep price, but Chelsea needs a bid accepted as soon as possible. That means going big now to make something happen fast.

Except there are two snags to that. The first is that time piece mentioned already. Haaland has been set at 150 million for weeks now. If Chelsea was never going to pay that, the time to switch to Lukaku was weeks ago. That might not have changed this overall situation, but it would have given the club more wiggle room to make Lukaku happen or to find a third striker option.

The second snag is the one most applicable now. Chelsea must bid big to get Inter to part with a player they want to keep and pay Lukaku huge wages to get him out of a club he wants to remain at. Lukaku is one of the world’s best strikers and fans should be ecstatic if he joins, but 100 million Euros with Alonso is a very steep price. And it still got rejected. Whatever is needed to actually get the deal over the line is going to be even higher. It’ll still be less than a Haaland deal, but that shouldn’t be how the club looks at the situation.

It’s good that Chelsea has moved on to a new target. It’s better late than never, with emphasis on it still being late. The Blues will have to pay a lot to convince Inter and Lukaku. Should that deal fail, hopefully the club is just as aggressive for the next target as they are being with Lukaku. It will make little sense to have tunnel vision for Haaland only to have the same for Lukaku in the final month of the window.