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No matter how many billions have been spent, Chelsea is still a team that cannot score goals.
But at least they are a team that looks a lot more complete than it did a few months ago.
Without taking anything away from Karim Adeyemi’s magical transformation and incredible speed, Graham Potter and Chelsea still struggled a bit as some 80,000 yellow-and-black Germans burst into a unified roar at Signal Iduna Park.
Because Chelsea had, in fact, been, even then, credited with a very far effort in the last 16 of the Champions League with all their new acquisitions.
These new acquisitions they spent more than seven billion crowns on during two conversion windows led by Todd Boehly.
The most precious of them all, Enzo Fernandez, was perhaps taken as a rounding mark by the 21-year-old super talent when he quickly and funny became the last man in defense for that crucial 1-0 goal in the 63rd minute. A minute into the game but the undoubtedly blond Argentine Not just a prestigious signing but a player who from day one made this unfinished project clearly more complete.
Dare I say this applies to other winter compacts as well.
Maybe see a pattern?
Atletico loanee Joao Félix may be a short-term solution to the crisis on paper – but he’s also a brilliant footballer, perhaps the most attackingly intelligent on the pitch. Although the tape was on its way when he got his golden chance.
Ukrainian billionaire Mykhailo Mudryk is the opposite of a short-term crisis solver — who’s also an incredibly exciting and exciting X-factor. But when his big opportunity appeared early on, Nico Schloterbeck made one of the most accurate, daring and brilliant breaks of the evening. Fellow defenseman Niklas Sule’s treatment of the onrushing Kai Havertz at the end of the match wasn’t stupid either. Or, for that matter, Gregor Koppel’s super save from Fernandez’s long-range finisher in overtime.
And here somewhere you might see a pattern?
Anyone who follows and follows Chelsea has likely seen the pattern for a while – no matter how good the game.
They cannot score goals.
Patience and forward thinking
The fact that a notorious top scorer went missing, and spent just over seven billion kronor later, indicates of course that at least some of the billions were grossly off-limits. And I think they were – maybe two or three of them. But there are also many other billions spent with thought, rhyme and reason.
After all, the rewritten MLB contracts through 2030 that nearly every promising winter recruit has signed weren’t written for reasons underlying Financial Fair Play. After all, they were written with long-term thinking in mind. With the understanding that this Chelsea is far from over and with all eyes on a title-winning future.
With the patience to be able to wait this out, already the Chelsea team is doing fairly well to score goals too.
Whether he will be fit enough to turn that double meeting around in just a few weeks’ time at Stamford Bridge must be left unanswered. It must also be left unspoken whether it will be finished enough to even salvage some scraps from this already flop-like season in the form of a European venue.
Goals are no small detail in football. But in reality it could have been much worse.