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Despite a solid start to the 2018/19 season that has seen them rise back up to the top 4 of the Premier League – for now at least – it’s pretty clear that Chelsea are still missing a couple of pieces that would make them bonafide title contenders again.
Maurizio Sarri has done a great job of re-energizing the Blues, but right now they’re still struggling in front of goal. Realistically, Chelsea haven’t had a top-tier striker to rely on since Diego Costa headed back to Spain last year.
Current reports are linking the Blues with Argentine hitman Gonzalo Higuain – who played under Sarri at Napoli during the 2015/16 season – and despite Higuain being 31 years old and not firing on all cylinders at AC Milan right now, here are 3 reasons why Chelsea should bring the Argentina international aboard in January anyway.
#1 Chelsea’s current strikeforce are badly misfiring
Chelsea have scored 38 Premier League goals thus far this season, and on the face of it, that suggests they don’t have many issues with finding the back of the net. But look a little deeper and you’ll see some serious issues. Firstly, they’ve scored 5 less than their nearest top 6 rival Manchester United, and they’re a massive 18 goals behind the division’s top scorers Manchester City.
The main problem is clearly with their strikers – the Blues can call upon the talents of Spanish international Alvaro Morata and French veteran Olivier Giroud, but neither man has looked anything close to prolific this season; Giroud has one league goal in 16 appearances – admittedly 10 of those have come from the bench – while Morata has 5 in 16.
Those numbers lag way behind Chelsea’s top scorer – attacking midfielder Eden Hazard, who has 10 – but they’re also behind Pedro, another midfielder, who has 6. Even N’Golo Kante, Ross Barkley and Ruben Loftus-Cheek have 3 each and Loftus-Cheek has only started one league game!
Simply put, Chelsea cannot rely on the goals of Hazard and his fellow midfielders to make up for the shortcomings of their misfiring striking duo. If they want to really challenge for the title – or ensure they make the top 4 and qualify for next season’s Champions League – then they need someone new, and Higuain could be that answer.
#2 Higuain is a proven top-level goalscorer
Higuain might not be having the best time on loan at AC Milan this season – although his goalscoring record of 6 goals in 15 Serie A appearances still trumps Morata’s record – but it’d be hard for anyone to deny that the Argentine hitman is a proven top-level goalscorer. Over the past decade, few strikers in world football have been as consistent as Higuain.
We’re talking here about a man who scored 121 goals in 264 appearances for Real Madrid – averaging around a goal every two games – and who, prior to his move to Milan, managed to score 146 goals in 251 appearances for Napoli and Juventus over the course of 5 seasons – averaging a goal every two games in the notoriously low-scoring world of Italian football.
That, of course, is a total contrast to Chelsea’s current strikeforce – but it’s also a big contrast to other strikers that the Blues have been linked with such as Bournemouth’s Callum Wilson, who has scored 30 goals in 83 Premier League appearances over the past 4 seasons – an average of a goal every 3 games. Wilson is younger at 26, but would likely cost almost as much as Higuain and isn’t nearly as proven at the very top.
Some fans have even called for the Blues to bring back Diego Costa – but even the fiery Spaniard’s goal record at Stamford Bridge – 59 goals in 120 appearances – only just matches Higuain’s record over a longer stretch in Italy.
Essentially, Higuain represents an excellent short-term fix – something that Chelsea need right now and have always historically loved anyway. He’s the perfect man for this job.
#3 Sarri got the best out of him
Gonzalo Higuain has been a pretty prolific striker for the majority of his career, but it’s hard to deny that the man who got the best out of the Argentina international is Chelsea’s current boss, former Napoli manager Maurizio Sarri. Higuain hooked up with the Italian boss in the 2015/16 season and the results were simply magical.
Higuain was in his third season with the Neapolitan club after his £35m move there from Real Madrid in the summer of 2013, and while he’d been highly successful from the off – scoring 17 goals in his debut Serie A season and then improving that to 18 in 2014/15 – nobody could’ve expected what he delivered under Sarri the following year.
The Argentine managed to deliver an absolutely insane haul of 36 goals in 35 Serie A games, while chipping in with 2 assists in the process. Napoli finished the season as runners-up to Juventus, but there was no question who was the league’s best striker – Higuain finished as top scorer, 17 goals ahead of his nearest rival Paulo Dybala.
Add in the fact that Higuain picked up 9 Man of the Match awards from WhoScored.com that season, and also averaged a career-best 5.2 shots on goal per game, and it’s safe to say that his style meshed with Sarri’s way of playing perfectly.
Sarri has thus far done a good job at Stamford Bridge of imposing his style of playing onto a very talented squad, but in terms of goalscorers, he’s clearly missing the final piece. Given how well he linked up with Higuain at Napoli, it makes perfect sense that he’d want to bring the Argentine to Chelsea to rekindle that magic.
