Delap & Pedro upgrade: Chelsea could sign “one of Europe’s most in-form CFs”
Enzo Maresca won’t be welcoming in the New Year full of optimism at Chelsea.
Indeed, the Italian is very much on a tight rope now when it comes to his long-term future in West London, with only one Premier League win coming his team’s way across their last seven league outings.
While the defence has now given up a concerning six goals across their last three games, Maresca will also be cursing the efforts of his attackers, too, with both Liam Delap and Joao Pedro struggling again versus the Cherries, leading to Enzo Fernandez and Cole Palmer having to put away the goals to secure a 2-2 draw.
Chelsea's ongoing centre-forward woes
A whopping £90m would be dropped on the services of the Englishman and the former Brighton and Hove Albion striker in the summer, off the back of the once potent pairing bagging 22 Premier League strikes between them last season.
Unfortunately, Delap has looked largely out of his depth leading the line for Chelsea, away from being a talismanic figure for a relegation-threatened Ipswich Town, with no top-flight goals next to his name for Maresca and Co. from ten league appearances.
One big chance would go begging from the ex-Manchester City youngster against Andoni Iraola’s men, with his equally lacklustre performance against Aston Villa earlier in the month seeing him fail to register a single meaningful effort at Emiliano Martinez’s well-protected net.
Pedro does, at least, have six Premier League strikes under his belt at Stamford Bridge, but he hasn’t been without his own set of issues, either, with regular barren patches of form seeing him come in and out of Maresca’s starting XI constantly.
For £60m, Chelsea fans just would have anticipated the Brazilian being more of a reliable source of goals than he has proven to be, with five top-flight games passing him by without a goal, before bagging two matches on the spin against Newcastle United and Aston Villa.
He also couldn’t steer the Blues to a late win when coming on as a substitute against the Cherries, as the powers that be at Stamford Bridge now possibly weigh up alternative strikers, away from Delap and Pedro, in January, with one red-hot centre-forward, in particular, sticking out.
Chelsea could now sign "one of Europe's most in-form CFs"
Chelsea have been linked to a whole host of exciting attacking names, with Antoine Semenyo once on their radar, before Manchester City stormed to the front of the queue.
Still, that doesn’t mean the Blues won’t be going after some other lethal targets, with a report earlier in December linking them to RC Strasbourg goal machine Joaquin Panichelli, who continues to light up Ligue 1 for Liam Rosenior’s men as an animal in front of goal.
While Delap has frustrated Chelsea fans ever since he made the move with his ineffective finishing, and Pedro has shown glimpses here and there of his goalscoring prowess, Panichelli has been exciting fans regularly at the Stade de la Meinau, with this audacious effort surely the pick of his Ligue 1 bunch for the campaign so far.
In total, nine goals have been fired home by the deadly Argentine from 16 league outings, with the South American only needing 32.3 touches on average this season to explode into life in front of goal.
Panichelli vs Delap & Pedro (25/26)
Stat – per 90 mins*
Panichelli
Delap
Pedro
Games played
16
10
19
Goals scored
9
0
6
Assists
0
0
3
Touches*
32.1
14.4
37.6
Shots*
2.4
1.5
1.6
Goal scoring frequency
146 mins
0 mins
242 mins
Goal conversion %
23%
0%
19%
Total duels won*
5.7
2.7
5.5
Stats by Sofascore
That is far from being the only impressive statistic that sticks out from the table above, with Panichelli finding the back of the net this season at a blistering frequency of every 146 minutes, as Pedro lags behind with a strike every 242 minutes on English shores.
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Moreover, while Pedro has stood out as a lively character up top for Chelsea this campaign in spurts with 5.5 duels won on average, his 6-foot-3 counterpart has won a slightly heftier 5.7 duels, which also trumps Delap’s own weak tally of 2.7.
Noted as being “one of Europe’s most in-form CFs” by scout Antonio Mango, this could be an earth-shuddering purchase for Chelsea in January, as they try to gain a new focal point attacker to push them up the standings.
Amazingly, Chelsea could even try to make this a double swoop, with Strasbourg boss Rosenior reportedly on their agenda as a potential Maresca replacement, as BlueCo prepare to use their connections.
With the former Hull City manager partly responsible for turning Panichelli into a “natural born killer” in front of goal, as per scout Jacek Kulig’s wild praise, it would be an outrageous move to win both the highly thought-of boss and the clinical striker in one window, as January goes down as being a potentially very busy month at Stamford Bridge.
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