So, a frankly terrible display against Fulham. However, Fulham were kept out and some decent saves made but we still didn’t really look convincing in front of goal. A win’s a win though, right?
I actually thought we were quite a lot better than recently, although it’s a low bar. Fernandez had his best game for weeks, didn’t have to run as much and mostly controlled the game from deeper. Still some poor decisions when potentially through on goal but I feel like that’s been an issue for years, maybe even since Diego Costa left?
For sure. We have rotten luck with strikers. In the 21st century, we have had only 3 prolific strikers, Hasselbaink, Drogba and Costa! That is shocking considering the money we spent and the names we have signed. Sutton, Kezman, Crespo, Shevchenko, Torres, Mutu, Falcao, Morata, Lukaku, Eto'o, all have ranged from mediocre to total dogshit! And those are some big names too!
I quite like Eto’o wish we had him in his prime. Shevchenko gotta be the biggest disappointment from that list.
There is talk of us possibly going for Benzema on loan until the end of the season, as he is apparently desperate to escape Saudi Arabia. I'd take that as a stop gap, until we can go for someone like Osimhen in the summer. Though as per our history, we will spend £100m on Osimhen and he will turn out to be ****e for us, like so many have.
The issue is that there is a real lack of actual quality strikers. Who is realistically banging in 20+ a season anywhere? I genuinely think that teams aren’t really set up for strikers these days. They seem to be there to bring more people into play for centre forward type players and wingers to bag the goals. having said that, we’ve had some terrible luck with strikers over the years.
There certainly has been a fundamental shift in football, especially in the last 15 years, towards having a front three, 2 wide players and a middle man, rather than the old school number 9 target man that used to be utilised in football. We have seen wide players and front men sitting further back like Salah, Ronaldo ,Mane, Messi, Hazard, Bale etc getting lots of goals whilst playing in a dynamic front three, its good because it doesnt rely on one goalscorer and if you have 4 or 5 front players that you can interchange and swap into a front three, it gives you a lot more attacking options. Take Liverpool of 2019 for instance, Firminho did a job there, but he didnt necessarily grab 25 goals a season, but no one cared because he had Salah and Mane grabbing 40-50 league goals a season between them.
Yeah, most teams nowadays don’t really bother with a traditional striker, Haaland aside. The issue we have is that our wide players don’t get anywhere near enough goals to compensate for lack of forward. All the good sides get 10+ from their front three, we don’t get that. Since you mentioned Firmino I’d actually take him here on a short team deal.
Yeah i'd probably take him on loan till the summer. or Benzema. Just in the short term, if they are desperate to come back to Europe.
Not setting up right is the key I think.Chelsea were extremely lucky ( or clever ) having players from Zola to Lampard, Joe Cole, more recently Hazaard who could score for fun. But we also had Strikers at the same time, Drogba, Jimmy Floyd and Costa so scoring was a regular occurrence. Since Costa it's been all down the sides and cross it, and we have no Terrys Carvallhos, or even Kurt Zoumas to head it in. Last couple of seasons we've really lost the plot, now we have no attack minded CDs, no goalscoring mids and a muddled central midfield who don't work together. We're a bit stiff with 2 great wide players injured in James and Chilwell, so we lose all the overlapping and assisting that Mudryk and his fellow wingers would get, plus both players score a few as well. Nevertheless I hoped the coach would have sorted a set up to counter these problems, but he hasn't. Our big money buys have all underperformed, few if any youngsters have improved much and teamwork is non existent.We've bought and sold poorly and seem likely to sell stupidly again if the word on Levi Colwill and Gallagher is right. Let's hope some lessons have been learned by "those upstairs", and things get better from the top down, cause we're not getting better from the bottom up.
