Chelsea has a goalscoring problem. That much was clear in a lackluster 2-0 loss to Arsenal last weekend. In 23 English Premier League matches this season, the Blues have scored 40 goals. That's good enough for sixth-best in the league. However, that also makes it the worst scoring record out of the Premier Leagues six power clubs — Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United. Worse yet is their record from strikers. Of those 40 Premier League goals, only five have been scored by Chelsea's top striker, Alvaro Morata, and only one has been scored by his understudy, Olivier Giroud. So it would be just as accurate to say Chelsea has a striker problem as much as it has a goalscoring problem.
There may be a solution to Chelsea's striker follies on the horizon, though. Chelsea is reportedly on the verge of signing Gonzalo Higuain from Juventus/AC Milan in hopes that his goalscoring prowess will kickstart their season and drive them to a top-four finish. Those hopes aren't unfounded. Higuain, 31, has an immaculate scoring record at nearly every stop in his career, from Real Madrid to Napoli to Juventus. However, he's slowed down somewhat in his first season with AC Milan, scoring six goals in 15 appearances.
If you're feeling a bit of deja vu with this whole episode, you're not alone. Higuain will be just the latest in a long line of high-profile strikers signing for Chelsea dating back to Roman Abramovich's acquisition of the club in 2003, only a few of whom can claim success at Stamford Bridge. And that issue has only become more prominent in recent years, specifically since Didier Drogba left the club the first time in 2012.
Since Drogba's departure, a number of big-name strikers have come to Stamford Bridge to try to become Chelsea's star striker and lead it into the future, from Samuel Eto'o to Fernando Torres to Radamel Falcao to Demba Ba to Diego Costa to Morata to Drogba himself, who returned for a spell in 2014 when, like now, Chelsea had goalscoring problems. While some of those players achieved varying degrees of success, none established themselves as a star striker or at least didn't establish themselves enough to keep Chelsea from looking for the next big thing.
Despite having the talent and the goalscoring record required to turn the season around for Chelsea, at 31, it's unlikely he's a long-term solution at the tip of Chelsea spear. It's much more likely he'll be like all those listed above — a stop-gap until the Blues enter the market for another top striker in a year or two.
Chelsea's near-constant search for its next great striker is somewhat understandable because, in many ways, they're still looking for a replacement for Drogba, one of the club's greatest players. In his first eight years with the Blues, Drogba helped bring unprecedented success and buckets of goals to Stamford Bridge. Along with four Premier League and one Champions League title, Drogba scored 157 goals for the club in all competitions. He scored seven more upon his return in 2014.
That isn't to say some of the strikers Chelsea has signed over the past seven years haven't done well during their times in London. But none of them became a centerpiece that the club could build around in an attempt to bring stable, long-term success. That's Chelsea's fault as much as the players'.
Take Costa for example. The Brazilian-cum-Spaniard was brilliant in his three seasons at Chelsea after signing from Atletico Madrid in 2014, scoring 59 goals and winning two Premier League titles in his three seasons at the club. But the only thing more certain at Chelsea than its annual search for a striker is managerial turnover, which Costa fell victim to.
Although Costa and manager Antonio Conte won the Premier League together in 2016-17, Conte infamously let Costa know he wouldn't be returning to the team the next season via a text that said, "You aren't in my plans." Six months later, after not playing a minute for Chelsea during the fall, Costa transferred back to Atletico Madrid. Six months after that, Conte had lost the locker room and was sacked by Chelsea. And now Costa's replacement, Morata, is struggling mightily and could be on his way out of West London as Higuain arrives.
There's also the matter of Romelu Lukaku, who Chelsea signed as a teenager in 2011 before he was "Romelu Lukaku." Although he hadn't yet reached international stardom at that young age, anyone with a set of eyes could tell you he had the potential to be a superstar. He proved that with successful loan spells at West Brom and Everton between 2012 and 2014, scoring 32 Premier League goals over that spell at just 21 years old.
But instead of bringing him back into the fold and building around him for years to come, that summer the Blues bought Costa and Loic Remy while also bringing Drogba back for his one-year return, leaving Lukaku the odd-man-out. He was sold to Everton, where in short order he became a star, the type of player Chelsea typically spends ungodly sums of money on in order to fix its neverending strikers woes, before heading to Manchester United in 2017. Because of the striker problems Chelsea has had over the last half-decade or so, the lack of patience with Lukaku may be the most egregious mistake of the Abramovich era.
So with Morata and Giroud not getting it done, it's time for Higuain to try to fix the Blues' striker problems. And he may well do it, at least initially. Higuain has been one of the best pure strikers in the world for close to a decade and he's hooking back up with Maurizio Sarri, whom he found great success with in their one season together at Napoli, when Higuain scored a mind-boggling 36 Serie A goals. But even if he does find some success in the second half of this season and next season, he's still 31 and on the backside of his career. Higuain may be an outstanding goalscorer, but he's a stop-gap. So regardless of whether he scores two goals or 20 goals down the stretch this season, in a year or two, Chelsea will be right back where it is now, once again looking for another top striker to lead it into the future.
