Seemingly every summer, Chelsea find themselves hunting for a wide attacker who is going to bring consistent threat and goals to the team. They have really struggled to find one they can settle on, and that means they also end up having to slew off slews of options every year.
We all know the names they’re linked to often – and Christopher Nkunku is head and shoulders above the rest. But what of the other options out there?
Football.London have quotes from former Blue Glen Johnson, who reckons that Cody Gakpo should be on their radar. He’s come up a lot in transfer rumours for Premier League teams, but Chelsea have rarely been mentioned. That might change now that the Dutchman has had such an impressive World Cup.
“Cody Gakpo has really caught my eye at the World Cup. It’s not easy to score at this level, also the way he reads the game, the way he plays and moves, he looks the real deal,” Johnson said.
“In terms of personnel, Chelsea need Gakpo more than Liverpool. Chelsea have always had fantastic wingers, but they never scored goals, if you don’t get in those positions to score goals there’s not much point in you being in the team. Gakpo looks like he could do it in the Premier League, he looks like he would burst onto the scene like Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz has for Liverpool.”
It seems unlikely that we sign both Nkunku and Gakpo – not least because we already have Raheem Sterling, Christian Pulisic and Hakim Ziyech in the first team picture, with Callum Hudson-Odoi out on loan too.
Until we sell one of our existing options, it’s hard to see us bringing in one, let alone two of these big name European attackers.
Hard to say we’re not getting enough production from the wings when, for several seasons it’s been the lack of a world class #9 that’s been our most glaring deficiency in attack. I’m all for an upgrade like Leao, but I don’t think we can expect that swapping out the personnel on the wing will suddenly fix our attack without massively upgrading at striker (sorry, but Auba is not a good fit, and, even on his best day, is no Kane, Lewandowski or Haaland). You could bring back Lukaku and try to design an attack to get the best of his qualities or you need to offload him and get a guy that’s gonna be the center of things. THEN figure out the wingers that will complement him. But for goodness sake, stop chasing the shiny object that doesn’t fit with the other pieces.