Chelsea’s big transfer dilemma: Sign a No 9 – or stick with what they have?
https://theathletic.com/4932745/2023/10/06/Chelsea-transfer-striker-osimhen-toney/
The summer window is long closed but the business of transfers never stops, and the biggest recruitment decision facing Chelsea between now and the January window is already clear.
Do they pursue a premium, proven No 9 in the new year to provide an immediate boost to this team’s scoring potential, or stick with what they have?
Despite Chelsea’s chronic struggles to find the net over the past year, the answer is not straightforward.
Going down the transfer route is particularly enticing because, unusually for the winter market, at least two high-profile strikers could well be available: Victor Osimhen of Napoli and Brentford’s Ivan Toney, who is readying himself for a return to competitive action in January after serving an eight-month ban for breaching the English Football Association’s betting rules.
Both will be entering the final 18 months of their contracts, putting their clubs in relatively weak negotiating positions.
Osimhen’s future with the Italian champions looks more precarious than ever after he was subjected to offensive social media videos posted on the club’s official channels last month. Toney changed his representation last summer, signing with leading global agency CAA Stellar, in a move widely interpreted as preparation for a transfer.
Osimhen is the more exciting target of the two and almost certainly the one with greater upside. Three years younger than Toney at 24 (he’ll be 25 by January), he won the Capocannoniere award as Serie A’s top scorer in 2022-23 with 26 goals, as Napoli won their first league title since 1990, as well as finding the net five times in six Champions League appearances.
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He will also very likely be far more expensive and command greater interest from rival clubs than Toney, who also enjoyed the best season of his career in 2022-23: 20 Premier League goals, a first England cap and a leading role in Brentford’s most successful top-flight campaign since 1936.
Toney has the advantage of being a known Premier League quantity, something Chelsea head coach Mauricio Pochettino placed greater emphasis on towards the end of the summer window — and the Argentinian has already confirmed he is more engaged than ever in conversations with co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart on recruitment strategy.
“When the transfer window was closed I said I need to be more involved now in all the decisions,” Pochettino said last week. “I have started to work to identify what we need for January.”
But it would be dangerous to assume that Pochettino is lobbying for a new No 9. He actively pushed back on suggestions in August that Chelsea should sign another striker, pointing out that Armando Broja was nearing a return from his lengthy absence due to an anterior cruciate ligament knee injury last December.
His publicly stated belief that summer arrival Nicolas Jackson can become a Premier League star is more than a mere motivational strategy. At some point, Pochettino will also have use of the injured Christopher Nkunku, another newcomer, who is not a true No 9 but was the man he appeared to be building Chelsea’s attack around in pre-season and who the club hoped would assume the mantle as the primary goalscorer in this team.
Broja’s lively showing against Fulham on Monday in his first start since the injury — coming five days after Jackson had scored a slick winner against Brighton & Hove Albion in the Carabao Cup — did more than help Chelsea secure their first away win of this Premier League season. It also underlined that competition for the No 9 spot at Stamford Bridge is the healthiest it has been since 2019-20, when manager Frank Lampard had the emerging Tammy Abraham and the evergreen Olivier Giroud.
The false nine folly that Thomas Tuchel and then Graham Potter too-often favoured is in the past, even if it is proving harder for Pochettino to draw a line under Chelsea’s broader scoring struggles. Jackson’s gilt-edged misses in the early weeks of this season make it clear they still lack a truly reliable finisher; Broja, for all his promise, had a relatively modest scoring rate at senior level before his long layoff.
Those players can be hard to find, and even harder to acquire. Arguably the most important team-building task facing Winstanley, Stewart and Pochettino between now and January is to decide whether Osimhen, Toney or another striker fits the bill or if they feel the best option is already in the squad.
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Recent history should remind Chelsea that the market offers no guarantees.
Romelu Lukaku replaced Abraham for the second time in three years at Roma this summer, in far less auspicious circumstances than he did as a £97.5million signing at Stamford Bridge in the summer of 2021. Osimhen may cost even more despite his contract situation, yet 2022-23 was his first truly prolific season by modern elite-striker standards.
Advanced statistics back up the notion that Osimhen is the real deal; his 0.66 non-penalty expected goals (npxG) per 90 minutes last season was within sight of Erling Haaland’s otherworldly 0.75 for Manchester City. Toney was some way behind both on 0.4, his tally of 20 league goals boosted by six converted penalties, though it is also fair to note that his success as the focal point of Brentford’s attack went beyond pure scoring.
Neither will be cheap to buy in January but the most important expense for Chelsea might be the lost opportunity of finding out what they have in Jackson, Broja and Nkunku. A season with no European football does not provide enough minutes for them to sustain three senior No 9s, so a big mid-season attacking acquisition would be bad news for that trio.
It is less a case of picking one of the two paths now, more of keeping one foot on each.
High-end modern transfers take a long time to negotiate, with months of groundwork often required to talk to the would-be selling club and the player’s camp, regardless of whether the deal ultimately comes off. Any significant player that Chelsea are targeting for January will be the subject of many private conversations in the preceding months.
But, at the same time, Chelsea will be evaluating Jackson, Broja and eventually Nkunku, and they will need to keep an open mind about what each player is, and can become in the Premier League.
“Football is very dynamic and it is about the present always,” Pochettino said. “Things can change until January. We need to work to recover Nkunku and Broja to try to provide the team with more goals and become solid. But, of course, we have already started to work (on transfers).”
