Chelsea club sources admit “another goalscorer” would have qualified Blues for Champions League | OneFootball

While we’ve spent plenty of time sticking the boot into Nicolas Jackson for his red card at the weekend and its potentially fatal effects on our Champions League chances, we’ve also made it clear that he’s not the only one who deserves the blame.

The fact that he is our only senior striker is an indictment of the squad planning for this season, and it seems like those at the club acknowledge the failure of their gamble.

Chelsea admit mistake in striker squad planning

Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart. (Photo by Chris Lee/Chelsea FC

Nizaar Kinsella’s piece for the BBC today about our search for a striker claims that “everyone at Chelsea is aware that a lack of quality finishing and therefore goals is stopping the team from taking the next step,” and that “Chelsea feel having another goalscorer would have been enough to have already qualified Enzo Maresca’s side for next season’s Champions League.”

Well, we said all of last summer that this was going to happen. Adding a teenage Marc Guiu to the extremely streaky Jackson who had only just finished his second season as a top level pro was always a huge gamble, and one it felt likely would backfire.

How Chelsea ended up in striker mess

So why did they put themselves in such a position? According to Kinsella, a deal for Victor Osimhen fell through because of his “wage demands on deadline day.”

Meanwhile other options on the market “were not considered good enough to add to what… Jackson could offer.”

None of that sounds like a very good excuse to us. Osimhen’s wage demands could have been scoped out months in advance. They should have known by the time the window opened that he was going to ask too much, let alone by the time it closed.