Does Chelsea need a Striker in the summer?

Chelsea had some problems in scoring

We know, the Blues have not been so good in putting the ball inside the net, but underlying data are not so bad and are improving.

Against Dortmund, the London-based side won with two goals and a clean sheet. They’re slowly improving and I’d expect them to continue to do so with time. Potter is not a bad manager and needs time to adapt and understand things. Furthermore, his Brighton team was not known for scoring a lot, am I wrong?

The personnel is better at Chelsea and will continue to be better, in the summer there will be some players sold I think, because they need money to sustain and also to trim down the roster and give Potter the best working situation possible.

Why I don’t think another striker is needed

Chelsea has loads of players, but the main point is that they’re going to bring in Nkunku. The French is a good goalscorer but he doesn’t start as a striker, he likes to arrive and score in the box starting deeper.

So in a 4231 system, he would play behind the striker, but that means you need a Striker who can create space with movements for Nkunku to attack, and possibly feed him with balls. This is something like Firmino in Golden Liverpool he dropped down and the central space was attacked by either Salah or Mané. At Chelsea, I can see it being done by Félix or Havertz while Nkunku and/or Madueke, Sterling, or Mudryk attack the space.

This is why I don’t think Chelsea should go for a Striker, at least not a number 9 type of striker, and at least not now. They should first let Potter understand how the team will play and where the team needs reinforcement.

But this is a newsletter on Transfers so what?

If my reading of the game is on point, and as I think Ziyech won’t be at Chelsea much longer, well, I’ve identified a good winger/striker hybrid that could help Chelsea have the type of attack that Liverpool had with good scoring wingers and arriving players.

But let’s go slower. The methodology is always the same, we go and find Chelsea's and Brighton’s play styles and it comes out they stay in the same cluster. So we go and filter our striker database for only teams that share the playstyle and play in Brazil or the top 7 leagues in Europe. See the list:

Then we filter for only players born after 1996 since Chelsea's strategy is about young players signing long-term contracts.

And then we individuate specific metrics to evaluate players:

• Touches in the midfield third for 100 touches

• Touches in the attacking third for 100 touches

• Touches in the attacking box for 100 touches

• Shots possession for 100 touches

• Shot-creating actions for 100 touches

• Space threat: offsides + progressive passes received for 100 touches

• Box entries: carries, passes, and crosses in the attacking box for 100 touches

• xT

• npxG per 90

• Takeons for 100 touches

Next step

With all of those, we go specific. We watch the Chelsea players that appear in the non-filtered striker database and they are:

• Havertz for 21/22 and 22/23 seasons

• Lukaku for the 21/22 season

• Werner for the 21/22 season

• Sterling for the 22/23 season

Then we take for each metric the max value of Chelsea’s strikers and filter the already filtered database for those. And we fail because no one comes out of that. So we adjust things. We keep the max value only for npxg per 90, offensive presence, shots, and space threat. We get the minimum value for midfield presence and median values for all the rest. In this way, the filtered database gives us only Núñez and Openda for this season.

That’s not all. We add Nkunku for this season and Félix while at Madrid for this season. Nkunku plays in a team that fits the team-play style of Chelsea but Atlético doesn’t, keep that in mind.

To finish, we play with data to return a table with the ranks in this shortlist for each metric for every player:

You can see that Nkunku has better values than Félix apart for takeons and fouls drawn, but they have a play style that would probably make work their partnership. The Liverpool striker would have been a good signing but it has gone. But look at Openda, he’s constantly top 2 for many values, and apart from passes and midfield presence he ranks among the best on the shortlist.

Replicating those numbers in a different team and league is not something easy but with time and support, he could continue the growth that has seen him jump from Eredivise to Ligue 1 in the summer and continue to do wonders, furthermore, he can play in different positions and is not scared to play in tight space, things that a positional playing top team should value highly enough.

Enjoy: