Mertens, Cavani and Rondon: Chelsea stalled striker hunt as club gamble that current squad can secure fourth
https://theathletic.com/1576630/2020/02/02/chelsea-striker-mertens-cavani-transfer/?source=shared-article
When the substitutes’ board was raised in the 83rd minute at the King Power Stadium to show Ross Barkley coming on for Tammy Abraham, recent Chelsea history suggested Frank Lampard had picked a key moment in a key match against Premier League top-four rivals to send a political message.
It was a day that had summed up the problems that drove Chelsea’s fraught and ultimately failed striker search throughout January. After a litany of missed first-half chances from Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Mason Mount, only Antonio Rudiger’s first Premier League goals for 15 months prevented Leicester from handing Lampard’s men a ninth loss of the season.
This late substitution wasn’t quite Jose Mourinho deploying Andre Schurrle as a false 9 at Old Trafford in 2013 while publicly pursuing Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, or Antonio Conte pointedly handing an unfit Barkley his Chelsea debut in a Carabao Cup semi-final against Arsenal in 2018 to highlight his lack of squad options.
But given the Chelsea head coach’s demeanour only 24 hours earlier at Cobham, the cynic’s interpretation was tempting — even if he later explained: “We have spent a lot of time this week on how we press without the ball and I thought Ross has been playing pretty well recently. It was just a case of bringing him on, [getting] he and Willian in those positions to maybe get a bit more ball because at that point it hadn’t really stuck for us much up there. It was just a choice.”
Olivier Giroud did not even travel with the Chelsea squad to Leicester, having trained with his future in the balance on January transfer deadline day. “It was nothing to do with his frame of mind, no,” Lampard insisted. “But he has had a few days where a lot of scrutiny has been on him and around him. I think it was case of travelling without him.
“We will all go away for a week away from each other. It’s probably what’s needed for everyone and we will come back and work hard, and Olivier is here. If he shows himself in training — because that is how I pick the team generally — then he will get his opportunities.”
Lampard had cut an agitated figure at Cobham on Friday as he admitted that, with almost 12 hours of deadline day remaining, the window was “95 per cent shut” for Chelsea. He even spoke faster than normal, his eyes darting quickly from left to right, any smiles vanishing from his face almost as soon as they appeared.
And in his keenness to paint his team as “underdogs” in what remains of the top-four race, his praise of Bruno Fernandes as a “world-class” signing for United and his invocation of “work” as the only solution to Chelsea’s problems, there were ominous echoes of the Conte who became content to use his media engagements to lob verbal grenades on his way to a toxic divorce with the board.
But the message here was slightly muddled, the obvious annoyance a little aimless; for Lampard also admitted that he wouldn’t have been satisfied by Chelsea buckling to pressure — both from the management and an expectant fan base — and talking themselves into a questionable deadline-day deal, as United later did with Odion Ighalo.
“The reality is I have an idea here as well of where I want to get to and I don’t think any knee-jerk reaction from myself or from the club would have been positive,” he insisted. And the reality of the January transfer window for Chelsea, as it was for other clubs, was a choice between doing something underwhelming or doing nothing.
As first reported by the Telegraph, sources have told The Athleticthat Chelsea were presented with an opportunity to take Salomon Rondon on loan from Chinese Super League club Dalian Yifang on deadline day. His arrival would have freed up Giroud to leave but would also have meant replacing the man who will likely lead the line for France at Euro 2020 this summer with a striker who scored 35 goals in 140 Premier League appearances for West Brom and Newcastle.
Chelsea opted not to go down the route with Rondon that United did with Ighalo, and the episode provided a fitting end to a January window that, having begun with the optimism born of a successful transfer ban appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), ended with as much frustration inside Cobham as played out on social media.
Agents had been alerted to Chelsea’s desire to do business in January even before the CAS decision was handed down and sources have told The Athletic that Marina Granovskaia met with the representative of Napoli forward Dries Mertens before Christmas to gauge his level of interest in a January move to the Premier League.
Lampard’s interest in Mertens sprang as much from his ability to play in a variety of attacking roles as his elite goalscoring pedigree and there was hope that his expiring contract might present a rare opportunity to acquire a quality forward relatively cheaply. The Napoli chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis quickly shut that possibility down. Mertens is also injured, and three goals shy of passing Marek Hamsik as Napoli’s all-time top goalscorer. It was a non-starter.
Chelsea enquired about Edinson Cavani once he made it clear he was unsettled but were only prepared to take him on loan. Paris Saint-Germain wanted a sale and not even Atletico Madrid, the player’s preferred destination, could match the €20 million asking price. That level of expense made no sense for an increasingly injury-prone 32-year-old who is paid more than N’Golo Kante, the highest earner at Stamford Bridge.
The only other high-profile striker who actually changed clubs late in the January window was Krzysztof Piatek. Representatives acting on his behalf offered him around the Premier League but Chelsea were not interested in spending on a striker who could not even hold down a regular starting place in a struggling AC Milan side.
Chelsea’s long-term targets were not available in January. Jadon Sancho and Borussia Dortmund agreed to revisit his situation in the summer while Timo Werner had no desire to leave RB Leipzig in the midst of a Bundesliga title race and a top-scorer battle with Robert Lewandowski. Wilfried Zaha and Moussa Dembele were both prohibitively expensive, and neither enjoyed unanimous endorsement in the club’s transfer discussions.
In this barren landscape, Chelsea were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the recent past — most notably the disastrous summer of 2017, when pressure from Conte played its part in around £55 million being spent on deadline-day deals for Danny Drinkwater and Davide Zappacosta that the club are still reckoning with.
Nor was it palatable to allow Giroud to leave without securing a replacement, regardless of his desire to safeguard his starting spot for France at Euro 2020. The optics in particular of sending him to Jose Mourinho and Tottenham, then watching both reel in and overtake Chelsea in the final stretch of the Premier League top-four race, would have been virtually impossible to recover from.
So in the end, Chelsea decided to stand put, prioritising the summer over the present. It is a calculated gamble that this squad, managed by Lampard, can get over the line to fourth. If it works, they will be in a perfect position to pursue top-tier names and take the team to the next level.
Lampard is invested in that long-term vision but he also knows that, like every other Chelsea coach in the Roman Abramovich era, he is being judged on his results right now. “We are fortunate that we have a nice group of young players at the minute but we have to keep looking forward and we are,” he told Match of the Day after victory over Hull City in the FA Cup.
“But for this season, short-term [recruitment] needs to be done. For the bigger picture, of course there is a plan, but for now, when you look at it, we want to finish in the top four. At the minute, it is quite clear to me where we can improve so we have to look to that.”
This is the tension that spilled out of Lampard on deadline day and the tension that might have surfaced once more if Chelsea had paid for their missed chances against Leicester. Instead, Rudiger’s equaliser gave him the chance to deescalate the situation heading into the winter break.
“It’s gone,” Lampard said of the transfer market. “I am not interested in the window, I am not interested in talking about it. I am interested in the point we got and what we do going forward.”
After sitting out the January window, Chelsea will remain a flawed team between now and the summer. Lampard’s decision to drop Kepa Arrizabalaga for Willy Caballero at the King Power underlined that, to achieve this season’s targets, he will need to navigate difficult problems at both decisive ends of his team.
But the public attitude of Chelsea’s head coach will be every bit as important in ensuring that he will be the man to oversee the club’s longer-term rebuild.
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