Robert Sanchez is having a long run in goal without a big mistake. Wesley Fofana and Trevoh Chalobah have formed a strong central defensive partnership at last. Moises Caicedo is dominating games in midfield as one of the best destroyers in the league. Chelsea have creative players dotted through the main creative categories of stats.
Chelsea’s team come together – they just need a top striker now
It feels like most areas of this team are coming together. So what are the Blues missing? Just a really deadly striker. For all of the bullets being fed to forwards, it’s conspicuous that on pure shots per game, the Blues don’t have anyone in the top 10. Enzo Fernandez takes 2.2, and sits in 11th place.
Compare that to Erling Haaland’s 4.1 and you see where we’re lacking. We don’t need Haaland, but we do need to do better than Joao Pedro (1.7) and Liam Delap (1.3).
Delap has barely had a chance to get going, both physically and in terms of chemistry with his teammates there’s much more to come from him. If he can start getting into positions to finish all these excellent chances we’re making, we’ll be in a great spot by the end of this season.
Cole Palmer – usually one of the league’s top shot takers – should be returning from injury soon to lighten the burden too.
In other news…
Things are certainly trending in the right direction in terms of creating these chances, with Chelsea’s main attackers all featuring somewhere in the key stats for chance creation.
Emmanuel Emegha is a future Chelsea player who we’re all excited about, and we could get a chance to see him this week after he got his first senior callup for the Dutch national team.
Liam Delap is NOT a “top striker.” And it doesn’t appear he’s going to round into one anytime soon. He gives us a somewhat different profile (bringing a bit more physicality than Jackson), but is he going to deliver us more goals then Jackson? It certainly doesn’t appear so.
All of the folks who carped about Jackson needing to go consistently failed to confront the obvious — whoever was brought in to replace him needed to surpass his goal contribution by a decent margin or it was going to be a waste of time and money. Everyone seemed to salivate when Delap and Pedro were targeted for acquisition, but neither had proven himself capable of surpassing Jackson prior to be being brought onboard and neither has done much since to make the case.
So, the question really has to be asked: If we weren’t bringing in a player who was a proven upgrade to Jackson (like, say, Victor Osimhen?) what were we doing splashing the cash? Why not keep our powder dry until a suitable upgrade would be identified instead of buying a pig in a poke with a guy (in Pedro) who isn’t even a proper 9 and another (in Delap) who is even less proven than Jackson? Alas, the grass is always greener seems to apply to the sporting directors every bit as much as it applies to the fan base.