We were WRONG to not sign a Striker, but RIGHT to say no to Victor Osimhen's demands

We have to keep to our wage structure...

So no striker for Chelsea, again. The fourth window under our current sporting directors, and four failures to deliver an elite striker, or at least strong competition for Nicolas Jackson. Simply not good enough for a club with our ambitions, and it hinders us from achieving them.

However, should Chelsea have broken our wage structure to sign Victor Osimhen? Should we have just “paid what it takes”?

I believe not.

Chelsea’s mistake was not refusing to bow to Osimhen’s wage demands, it was pursuing him for so long that we left ourselves with no alternatives. In reality, we should have set a deadline for a move and had another lined up ready just in case. That was the mistake here. We could have held talks over a provisional move for Ivan Toney whilst also trying to get the Osimhen deal done, and then pulled the trigger on Toney once we began to realise we wouldn’t get Osimhen.

I believe Toney would have chosen us over a move to the Saudi Pro League, largely for his international career. The Saudi’s could then have pursued Osimhen to their hearts content.

But back to my point. Chelsea should not break their wage structure for anyone. The only exceptions I could think of would be a Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland or Lionel Messi level player, who is established as a huge world class player and has already earned that salary. Victor Osimhen, for all his qualities, is not that right now. I also had doubts as to whether Osimhen even fits Maresca’s style of play. Toney was a far better fit for that, hence I believe would have been the better signing.

Chelsea no longer have a rich benefactor ready to subsidise big wages and big spending, and yet keep us compliant with PSR without the need for big revenues. Now we have to be a self-sustaining club and become profitable, and with wage caps potentially coming, we also have to be conscious of how much we pay.

I believe the structure of low base salary, with big increases based on team success and achievements (which bring in more revenue to pay for it), is the best way to go. It pushes players to play better, because they know the more success they have, the more they’ll ultimately be paid. And we reward good performers with pay increases in their current contracts, like Cole Palmer this summer.

This may cost us the occasional player - like Victor Osimhen - but overall I think its much more sustainable way to run a football club. We’ve seen players on big contracts like Joao Felix and Jadon Sancho willingly take pay cuts to fit within our wage structure in order to join Chelsea this summer. To me that speaks volumes about their motivation, which is clearly more football oriented than financial, which is what we should want in our players, and helps the overall mentality of the squad.

Our wage bill, excluding all loan players, and including the likes of Ben Chilwell, Davide Washington, Angelo, Cesare Casadei, Omari Kellyman, and Carney Chukwuemeka is £167.5m per year. Without those players its £142.5m. If you add half of Sterling’s wages, which we’re alleged to be paying, of £7.5m, the two totals are £150m and £175m. When you think that in the club accounts for 2022/23 season ,Boehly/Clearlake’s first season in control, the wage bill was a whopping £404m, that’s a wage reduction of well over 50% made in just over a year.

Not only that, we’ve cut the wage bill, and yet we still finished only 5 points off the top 4 last season - the fourth best team since matchday 8 last season - with a young squad that, without many changes, is now a year older and has some new additions like Pedro Neto and Jadon Sancho who will improve us, and injured players like Christopher Nkunku and Wesley Fofana fit again, and Romeo Lavia and Reece James back after the international break. As such, I still believe we’re in a strong position to compete for the top 4 this season.

We could get a transfer ban soon due to the historic offences related to Roman Abramovich, but if we do, my view is its more likely to start next summer. That would mean we still have one transfer window in January 2025 to rectify the position up front. We could even try again to do a deal for Victor Osimhen, though our experience with his agent this time might put us off. In truth, there’s a dearth of proven elite strikers out there, so we may again go for a younger, yet proven striker. We might have to pay a premium in January but its an absolutely necessary signing, so hopefully they can start working now on getting that sorted.

Personally, I can absolutely see us going for Evan Ferguson now Brighton have signed another striker. He’s very promising, we’ve looked at him before and if he proves his fitness in the next four months, given the lack of proven strikers we may go all out for him in January. The only other option I can see us moving for is Victor Gyokeres, but he’d be very expensive and likely demand high wages.

But whoever we sign, if anyone, will have to fit in with our wage structure. Its important Chelsea are run in a sustainable way now, in order to ensure we comply with financial rules, and don’t end up in debt or in danger of financial ruin again, as we were in 2003 and in 2022 at the change of ownerships. The secret is to run us sustainably financially, whilst also being competitive at elite level, because competing at that level is where we make the big financial rewards.

We just have to hope that this season, we can finally make the top 4 so that we can make that leap both financially and competitively, so we can move forward as a club.

But our unwillingness to compromise for Victor Osimhen sends out a strong message. We won’t alter our wage structure for anyone, even a big name elite striker. We won’t be reckless and irresponsible with our spending anymore, especially in terms of wages. It shows we’ve learned the lessons of paying Raheem Sterling 325k a week.

And in my view, this is a good thing for the club in the long run.

The Score