Nobody should be making any excuses on striker crisis now, Nkunku and free agent market is bleak outlook - I'd take Diego Costa though! Can we still succeed this season? Loan army report, Much more...
The Chelsea FC Newsletter: Friday 14th February 2025!
Morning all!
Happy Valentines Day for anyone who likes that kind of thing!
Hopefully Chelsea can give us all a warm feeling in our hearts tonight by beating Brighton away from home, something they failed to do in the FA Cup on Saturday. The Blues face The Seagulls in the Premier League tonight for the 8pm kick off.
I’ll be back on the site on Sunday to go through the game and put my reactions out. Do join us on the Substack App for the live discussion thread for the game on Saturday though!
To the content now, and we have Luke Rushbrook back this week with his infamous loan army report. He’s not been doing them through January because of all the movements and rumours, but you can read his latest one here.
The Score has finished off his amazing week of articles for us with his latest reacting to the striker injury crisis we are now facing. Can we still save our season? He looks at all of that and addresses it in here.
You can round up all your latest general Chelsea news from across the last 24 hours in the same place here as always.
Now, my turn to react to the striker news, and I think most know what I am going to say on it! And yes, I WAS asking for a new striker WAAAAYYY before these injuries, as were most. I’m sick of hearing excuses such as ‘but no striker was available’ or ‘you can’t predict injuries’ etc, etc, etc. There’s literally no excuses for this mess after FIVE transfer windows of neglecting the position, which I talk much more about here.
Could Chelsea dip into the free agent market? Well, the names are bleak, and I have them in here. But there is one name I’d be interested in, even if that’s more nostalgia than anything else! Bring me Diego Costa!! I’m slightly joking, but only slightly. I have words in this too on Christopher Nkunku not being a 9, again!!
And on both of the above articles, I did a solo Podcast yesterday too in the absence of poor Jai who is going through it at the moment - I went much more into all the above, as well as dissecting Enzo Maresca’s latest press conference, speaking about Brighton tonight, and much more in here. I don’t often do solo pods but I really enjoyed this and need to do it more!
See you all on Sunday! Have a good weekend. And COME ON CHELSEA tonight!!
Peace, Si.
The owners and SD’s need to live with the decisions they have made and let’s see where we are at the end of the season.
Costa is not the answer. Aresenal of course face the same situation. ESPN said about Costa:
"In 2022, five years after departing Chelsea (where he scored 59 goals in 120 games and won two league titles), Costa returned to the Premier League with Wolves and scored only a single goal across the campaign. It quickly became clear that he could not play with the same bruising, punishing physicality that once defined his style of play.
Several years on and it's tough to believe anything has changed for the better. The past two years have brought mixed campaigns in Brazil with Botafogo and Grêmio. Now 36, he struggled to stay fit in 2024 and rarely played a full game."
Ben Yedder might be a go on a short term basis. At least he knows the position. I prefer taller powerful strikers but we are in a bind.
Of the wingers Madueke is the one I favour because he has the best shot. Doubt he is much in the air though. So there is little point in having Neto send crosses in.
So Sanchez, Madueke Nkunku as the front 3 with Palmer as 10. Alternatively a false 9 ha ha. Very false I guess.