It was put to Graham Potter in his press conference today that Chelsea had made a mistake by strengthening all over the pitch apart from up top – where they’ve had big problems.
The Chelsea coach pointed out it’s not that simple. The right profile of striker, at the right price, just wasn’t available, apparently.
He also pointed to a mistake made by the club not long ago. They spent £100m on Romelu Lukaku not long ago, and within 12 months he was out on loan.
Graham Potter:
"I don't know whether this was the case but from the outside, it seemed #Chelsea had a problem with scoring goals and they spent close to £100M on a no.9 who was meant to fix the problem. As far as I can see, it didn't fix the problem."
[via @MailSport]
— Absolute Chelsea (@AbsoluteChelsea) February 17, 2023
He’s absolutely right, you can’t just throw money at a problem and expect it to work.
On the other hand, given the new owners have thrown money at every other problem, you’d have thought it was worth adding the most pressing one of all to the list, just to see if it worked.
You had two windows, and the best option you could come up with was… Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang?
I can accept that perhaps Auba was the best option available (for the price) after top bin choices like Lewa and Haaland had already landed at clubs that weren’t going through the turmoil Chelsea was in over the summer. And perhaps the market was little better this Jan. BUT I have a far harder time accepting that Havertz was a better option than recalling Lukaku. Big Rom clearly wasn’t a fit for Tuchel, but Potter has shown far more flexibility (recently switching to a back four), and, especially with the recent acquisition of a bona fide 10 in Felix, having Lukaku as an option would seemingly have made at least some sense (as opposed to no viable #9 in the entire team!).