Chelsea have long been expected to sign a striker this summer. In fact, even after Nicolas Jackson arrived at the club last summer, we were expecting a bigger and more established striker to join him.
No good opportunities presented themselves, and the Blues went through last year with just Jackson, with even Armando Broja leaving on loan in January. But it can’t go on forever – an alternative is needed to the Senegal striker, even if he did impress beyond most expectations in his debut season.
The last 24 hours have seen rumours about who might be coming in narrowed to three prime options: Dom Solanke, Samu Omorodion and Jhon Duran.
But what a lot of people have pointed out is that none of them really offer an upgrade on Jackson.
On Twitter, one user compared the stats of each of those strikers to Jackson, and found the Chelsea man dominating pretty much across the board.
You can see the comparisons in the images embedded here:
The strategy from Chelsea seems to be to buy a striker to rotate with Jackson rather than replace him. And looking at these targets, who all have similar style to their game to Jackson, you can see the direction they’re going in.
The question is, if you’re not going to make a move for a player who is a serious upgrade, is it worth making the move at all? Wouldn’t we be better off spending the money elsewhere, if the player brought in isn’t going to significantly upgrade the first team? If we’re looking just for a body there are surely cheaper options out there than this trio, each of whom looks likely to command a fee of something in the region of £30-60m.
Last summer the co-sporting directors kept their powder dry and didn’t panic. It worked out well – why change tack now?
We all recognize that Jackson needs to improve on his chance conversion, but what these stats show is just how strong the rest of his game is. His non-penalty expected goals are really pushing into elite territory where you have to start talking about names like Haaland to find players that are better.
Given all this, there are precious few strikers in the world with a profile that puts them clearly above Jackson and, on the rare occasions when they become available, they all cost +100m! This means that Chelsea would have to break the bank (again) to land one of these guys (like Osimhen) and even then it’s a bit of a question mark as to whether they will deliver more production than an improving Jackson. For that reason I tend to agree with the club’s reported belief that it makes more sense to buy “Jackson, Jr.” at a relatively reasonable fee in the hopes of providing a backup and developing an asset that, even if they don’t exceed Jackson, will appreciate in value.