Paging TVOR - Just watched this guy's goals from his time at Roda and most of them are in and around the six yard box. Could this be THE FOX IN THE BOX* that you have suggested for roughly the PAST TEN YEARS? *need to bear in mind that this was the Dutch second tier so he could be a sausage dog in the box and probably still score a hatful...
Not necessarily, I think the likes of Jonas Wind, Gabriel Barbosa, Kieffer Moore, and Daryl Dike (perhaps), who have been mentioned in the transfer suggestions thread have a fair chance of being 'the one' and none of which would cost more than £15mil (I'd guess Wind £12mil, Barbosa £15mil, Moore £9mil, Dike £14mil). Of course we wouldn't necessarily be able to get any of them if we were willing to spend the fees though. I agree with your assessment of Ugbo, but I think his likelihood of being 'the one' rather than just 'a one' is slim enough that the risk is still a large one and we should still be making more signings in the position to be sure at least one of them pays off. The level of risk seems fairly reflected in the £5mil fee.
In all seriousness, at that price, seems like a decent enough gamble. He's scored goals in the crap leagues in Netherlands and Belgium but the thing that sinks a lot of these players is that they were never going to be suited to English football and at least he's been exposed to some lower league cloggers at a young age.
Contract expiring next summer, Chelsea want to sell, will lose him on a free in 6months if they don’t sell now. I hope he isn’t the striker we’re banking on staying in the Premier League with, but as a back up/bench player, at £5mil he’s worth it. If our striker options are: 1. New ST 2. Pedro 3. Ugbo 4. Deeney Then that’s good enough. We still need a marquee signing upfront. Ugbo replaces Gray in my opinion.
Speaking personally, after a year of watching Deeney, Gray and Welbeck flop like Mr flop from flop town, I’d be quite open to seeing some exciting fearless youngsters given a go in the PL. Proven high end PL strikers are out of our price range I fear anyway. This guy looks like he has bags of pace and is an instinctive finisher. Will combine very nicely with Sarr.
https://forum.talkchelsea.net/topic/21782-ike-ugbo/ Very good interview with him here reproduced in full on the Chelsea forum. Really like the way he talks, seems like a smart and mature young man, attitude seems right to go to the top. Could also see us being a good fit for him but he'd definitely wouldn't be coming here to be third or fourth choice.
I don't know if we'd have a defined hierarchy in that sense, I can see us signing a few young players and then our young strikers (Pedro, Cucho, Ugbo, maybe another) all given chances to get into the side. That seems like a different proposition to being designated fourth choice. Ugbo was a near ever-present in the same Chelsea youth team as Mount, Tomori, Trevoh Chalobah and others in 16-17 but then didn't pull up any trees in his EFL loans. Was the youth team's main striker instead of Solanke, who is a year older (but who spent much of that year training with but not playing in the senior side). (As an aside, didn't realise that Solanke only has one year left on his contract. He's actually had a really good season, with lots of goals and assists)
We would have to be insane to commit any money at all to trying to rehabilitate Gabigol in European football, and from what I understand from a mixture of listening to Tim Vickery and fans of teams he plays for/against in Brazil, he is Vydra-esque in essentially only ever being effective as a second striker and in a way that English/European teams just don't really play. On that theme, here is a comment from a Flamengo fan on reddit as part of a discussion I was involved in over him:
A player being "insane" hasn't stopped us in the past, in fact it's practically the reverse. He's also a bit older now than when he was last in Europe, perhaps he's matured a bit? On the second point, a striker like Vydra leading the line wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing in the world. Perhaps the key thing we could need from a striker is the ability to get on the end of crosses in to the box from Sarr, and Gabigol (and Vydra) seem to have a decent amount of that 'fox in the box'/poacher's instinct still. Perhaps you could elaborate a bit more in what way exactly he isn't a "traditional striker" and why that might be a problem for us? We do also set up in a 4-3-3 with a fairly attacking midfielder at the point of the diamond and quite a fluid style, perhaps if Gabigol had plenty of support from the LW, RW, and AM buzzing around him then being more of a "second striker" type player wouldn't be so much of an issue? Maybe if he had an AM behind him who was also strong and decent in the air, so capable of holding the ball up and also getting on the end of crosses, such as Yangel Herrera or Nick Powell, it could work?
The fact it was only in the Dutch 2nd division can be disregarded. You simply have to divide the number of his goals by 50 to calculate the number of goals he’d score for us in the prem.
Same with the Belgian top division as well, Perica got 1 in 2 there, Samatta won the golden boot with 23 goals in 38 games but could only manage 1 in 14 for Villa before getting shipped off to Fenerbache.
Don't write this fella off before he kicks a ball, Maybe he would benefit from a fresh start with a new parent club that will give him a sense of belonging and a chance to play for them, and not just see him as an investment to be loaned out here there and everywhere, with no continuity, or sense of belonging. Chalobah is a prime example.
Could be decent but would rather we didn’t go down the previous route of signing a load of crap strikers for £5m each, rather than pooling that money and dropping £20m on someone a little more established Suspect they’re perhaps hesitant after having had their fingers burnt with Gray however, although we did drop serious money on Sarr, so maybe the ambition is there if the player is right
If we'd have signed Harry Kane based on his stats while on loan I think we'd have all been disappointed. All about environment and Chelsea-obsessed Chalobah would take him under his wing
When have we even gone down the route of signing a load of crap strikers for £5mil each? Lately it seems we've either mostly gone for loans and freebies, or just not bothered signing any strikers whatsoever regardless of how good they may or may not be.
Hopefully he is one of two or three central strikers coming in. It's obvious they don't have much faith in Gray, Success or Perica so these need replacing. I'd be happy with this and hoping someone else will be joining.
With the number of strikers on our books, I imagine it will be a 'one in one out' policy. Could do with getting rid of Deeney, Gray, Success, Perica, Sinclair and Penaranda.
Further to my post above, I'm struggling to even think of strikers in a bracket of between £16mil-29mil who are "more established", seem a sure-fire hit, and who we could possibly attract. The likes of Toney and Abraham would cost at the top end of that or above, and we couldn't get them anyway. One only needs to look at the struggle of sides such as West Ham, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Everton, Brighton etc. to get a quality striker to see that even dropping £20mil is no guarantee of finding someone with the possibility of being prolific, with there being many relative failures or mediocrities in that price bracket in recent times such as Joelinton, Haller, Maupay, Brewster, Tosun etc. Even if there was a Sarr-level star out there who we'd be willing to spend the money on, it might be more difficult to get them at the moment having only just been promoted again. I reckon that signing a striker of the kind of profile I'd mentioned above in the c.£10mil-15mil bracket who has some chance of getting a decent number of goals, plus a couple of slightly riskier punts at around £3-7mil such as Ugbo, Kara, Mavididi, Carlos Jr, Julis etc. could be a good way to go about it, unless there's somehow a nailed-on sure-fire hit we can get (though even then we'd need to sign at least one new back-up in case they got injured).
I think it practically goes without saying that all of them need to leave this summer. The only one who might still be able to do a job is Gray, sadly, but I'd only keep him if we can't somehow bring in at least two other strikers who are obviously better options. Even if we can't shift them we'll need to sign more strikers as we'll be going right back down if we have to use any of them at all regularly.
Deeney and Gray will be here next year as nobody will pay the wages we do and both will know that. Not a chance in hell that either get anywhere near that kind of money again. Perica signed for two years I think but I'm sure we can loan him out somewhere. Surely the contracts for Success and Sinclair must be up this summer
Thankfully Sinclair's deal is up this summer. Penaranda is contracted until 2023 but I think if any club is happy to take him we should just give him away. Same with Success, Gray and Deeney to be honest.
For full disclosure, here is the other comment the poster referenced in my first screenshot: So from a fan of his team this season, as of three months ago, it pretty strongly appears that he is not of the opinion that he has matured a bit - that's really all I can offer on that. Apart from anything else, I don't think we're about to spend €16m on someone to who is that 'unorthodox'/that much of a risk, and still manages to fulfil the Watford holy grail of being a striker deployed on his own upfront who isn't capable of playing as a striker on his own upfront.
We could surely find someone who'd at least take Deeney and Gray on loan with us subsidising around half their wage? Even then it'd be worth it to us.
Nothing will ever beat the decision to extend a perma-crocked Janmaat's contract (that would have been up last summer) never getting him back to fitness and then paying off his new contract.
I agree. However, remember that Gino absolutely loves to protect assets with any value above £0. Loaning either of those two out means letting them walk for free in a years time. I guess it works if we are certain that no one anywhere will take them for a fee so any percentage of wages paid to us will be seen as money saved - but we may as well just give them away now and save all their wages in that case.
Not saying we don't, and how many players careers have we improved by doing it..... none it doesn't work.
That was as of 3 months ago, and he seems to have been on fire since then scoring basically a goal a game across the league and Copa Libertadores. As for his positional play, I'll need to see more of him to get my head round it, it's difficult to see the way in which he's unorthodox from the highlights I've watched. We did just get promoted though with JP up front on his own, who is neither particularly adept at it, nor much of a goalscorer. At least Gabigol might be more of a goal threat. Perhaps @Markoa$ might care to weigh in on this discussion, given that he suggested him initially and has likely watched more of him than me?
As has been mentioned on numerous occasions, the Success fee is of little relevance, but of course Gray is another cautionary tale to add to the list of c.£20mil striker flops I posted above.
We should have given them away last summer if possible. Of course if we could get someone to take them off our hands for free now we should do that instead, but perhaps it still isn't that simple with them both not wanting to take the one year wage cut it would require?
