Edinson Cavani, Lewandowski and Torres: Chelsea's striker dilemma

Most of us are sick of talking about it, but let’s do it some more anyway. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, it’s pretty clear cut that Chelsea need to invest in a top class striker this summer. I feared last year that putting all our eggs into the “Torres will come good” basket was a risky strategy, and ultimately, that fear was proven correct.

His goal return wasn’t a bad one by any means, 22 goals in 64 games looks pretty reasonable on paper. The problem is that you can count the really crucial ones on one hand. It’s all well and good scoring the 5th goal in a 5-1 win at Leeds, or the 4th in a 6-0 win at home against Wolves, but it’s the big names that step up in the big games (read Drogba, Didier).

The senior management at the club didn’t help matters. I find it hard to believe that Roberto Di Matteo was happy about going into an entire season with one striker. A striker that had failed to live up to the billing in his first 18 months at the club. There was of course Daniel Sturridge, who in my opinion should have been given more opportunities. However it was fairly obvious that neither club nor manager saw him as an out and out striker.

Torres started relatively well, but that quickly disintegrated into the poor form we’d come to expect. Several barren runs in front of goal and some real horror performances followed. The powers that be tried to rectify this in January with the sale of Sturridge and purchase of Demba Ba. Again, he started well, but again it soon petered out into sluggishness mixed with goal droughts. In truth, he was never going to be anything more than a stop gap for the remainder of the season.

This year needs to be different. The likes of Oscar, Juan Mata and Eden Hazard deserve to be supplying top class talent week in, week out. I’m all for the club’s strategy in buying younger players for smaller fees, but in this position, I really believe we need to be looking at the elite. You only need to look over at Manchester United for proof of that. They bought the best striker in the Premier League, despite his age and injury concerns, and he’d effectively wrapped up the league for them several months before the end of the season.

Top class strikers seem to be a dying breed nowadays, and there were only three available ones out there that would fit the bill for me. Radamel Falcao, Edinson Cavani and Robert Lewandowski have risen significantly into elite players over the past couple of years. At various points in the season, I’ve had my heart set on each one of them coming to Stamford Bridge. In recent weeks, Falcao has taken the money in Monaco, and it’s become pretty conclusive that Lewandowski will be off to Bayern Munich very soon. That leaves Cavani, who I believe, we now must make every effort to sign.

In three consecutive seasons, Cavani has scored over 30 goals for Napoli. He’s hard working, strong, fast and a fantastic finisher. With Manchester City sniffing around him, we really need to make our move. Signing him could be the difference between winning the league or not for both clubs. We know he’s not going to come cheap. Reportedly, there is a buyout clause of around £54m in his contract. Granted, a huge sum of money, but a fee that I believe would be worth paying.

If we can somehow include Torres in the deal as a makeweight, then that would be brilliant. Whether Napoli would want him or not is a different question entirely, but with the recent appointment of Rafael Benitez, it may be more of a possibility given the good relationship that they share.

Some may ask where this would leave Romelu Lukaku after his successful season on loan at West Brom. To me, it’s not as much of a problem as people think. As stated earlier, you need more than one striker at a club, especially at an elite one such as ours. There will be lots of opportunities for him to play throughout the season. We could even play two up front in certain games, god forbid. In an ideal world, I would say bye bye to Torres and Ba, sign Cavani and bring back Lukaku as our other striker.

Easier said than done of course, but surely not beyond the realms of possibility. A world class finisher, a hungry beast ready to make his mark at Chelsea, and the incoming Andre Schurrle giving us a third option with his versatility. Sounds rather appealing to me.