Chelsea and Spurs battle for a winger

Federico Chiesa’s agent has been a busy boy. The Juventus forward has 12 months left on his contract, and his current club aren’t terribly interested in giving him a raise. So he’s getting shopped around to clubs that don’t cringe when presented with a €8m per season salary demand, which is mainly big ones in the Premier League.

The fee is unlikely to be an issue due to his contract running down — Juventus is willing to let him go for €25m, which is quite reasonable for a 26-year-old of Chiesa’s caliber.

Chiesa also reportedly has myriad suitors in Saudi Arabia, but is only interested in making a move to England. Thus far, the teams reportedly interested in trying to work something out with his agent are Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. He’d likely make a positive contribution to both teams, but I’ve got my doubts about the idea, both due to the player’s recent performances and the clubs’ circumstances.

Last season, Chiesa’s production was a bit of a mixed bag. As the immortal Gennaro Gattuso so eloquently put it: Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit. I think he was a bit out of place as a second striker in a 3-5-2, usually drifting around underneath or wide of an out-and-out 9. He did a lot of passing and carrying well, but not really any of the striker stuff, though he did well to score 8 non-penalty goals from just 5.33 xG.

39 shot assists, 4.52 xG assisted in 2347 minutes for a player in his role is acceptable, but certainly not exceptional.

Both the numbers on his radar and his key passes map give a little bit of a hint to what Chiesa should be doing going forward: Playing wide. It’s what he did at Fiorentina, and in his debut season at Juventus, to great effect. The combination of an ACL injury a couple years ago and Juve’s switch back to 3-5-2 seem to have derailed his career a little bit, and it’s reasonable for teams who play with true wingers who cut inside to think Chiesa will pop for them on the left.

But between PSR and general squad bloat, Chelsea and Tottenham would both need some outgoings to make this move feasible.

Chelsea might see Chiesa as an upgrade on Raheem Sterling, but they’re unlikely to find someone to offload Sterling to, since his salary is more than double what Chiesa’s asking for at the moment. If the plan is to add some serious strength in depth and rotate Chiesa and Sterling, they’ll need to find somewhere to send Mykhailo Mudryk. I’m not sure who’s interested in paying most or all of Ukraine Bolt’s wages.

Noni Madueke has been linked with a move to Newcastle, but for that to be Chiesa-related, Enzo Maresca would need to see Sterling or Chiesa as a first choice right winger. I dislike that idea.

Tottenham have similar problems. Their squad is about 25% right-footed striker-winger tweeners with questionable shooting output, and they certainly do not need to add another to the pile.

Richarlison has been linked with a Saudi move, but we know how that goes. Those reports are usually an agent trying to get a raise or the Saudis publicly begging a player who isn’t currently interested. You never know who’s just thinking “fuck it, give me the big payday,” but it’s tough to envision Chiesa making sense for Spurs without Richarlison deciding to bounce.

If either Spurs or Chelsea signed Chiesa, fans should be excited about the pickup. He’ll probably put up better numbers in those teams than he did at Juventus, and he’ll come in at a reasonable cost that’s not going to be a massive ball and chain if he fails to live up to expectations. But both clubs would need to negotiate a tricky exit for someone else, and that might dictate where Chiesa ends up.

-KM

News and Rumours

• Man City and Barcelona are allegedly now in a “race” to sign Dani Olmo. One has money, the other does not. (But they do have infinite levers*.) One is in Spain, the other is not. It’s a pretty difficult “race” to handicap, if we’re honest.
  
  * Levers are like crypto — they can be exchanged for monetary equivalents both now and in the future. Some are direct exchanges, while others have increasingly Rube Goldbergian methods required to extract tangible value. Unlike crypto, to our knowledge no players have ever chosen to be paid in levers, but weird shit happens in football all the time and teams outside of Barcelona now seem in greater need of levers for a variety of reasons.
  
  It occurs to us that maybe Barcelona should have patented the term football levers in previous summers, the income of which could act as a future lever in the recruitment of Dani Olmo.

• West Ham had a bid for Neco Williams rejected. Eh? Oh… that’s not a typo. They mean the Nottingham Forest fullback from Wales, not the Spanish starlet pursued by Barcelona, Arsenal, and now PSG. Sorry about that Hammers fans, we got excited for you too.

• We are not describing Chelsea as being weird because we don’t like the club. We dislike all clubs equally. But when you sign your 8th senior GK to the men’s team, everybody around you starts to wonder, “Maybe 6 GKs were enough?” and admit to themselves that, yeah, you’re pretty fuckin’ weird right now.

• LIKE A NEW SIGNING CLAXON, how we have missed you.
  
  Arteta on Jurrien Timber: “He’s like a new signing for us, a big addition to the team. Now he’s getting the rhythm because obviously he’s missed a lot of football in the last year or so. Just look at him… his pressing, his leadership, his composure.”

• Manchester City see Jamal Musiala as a potential successor to Kevin de Bruyne, reports CaughtOffside. This feels like a case of transfer rumour math adding up, but they definitely have our attention.

• Chelsea terminated 25-year-old French defender Malang Sarr's contract was to allow him to join RC Lens on a free. He was signed from Nice at age 21 after making 100 appearances there (usually a good sign), loaned out around Europe, and then they ripped up the last year of his contract to get his wages off the books. He was both physically gifted and a tidy passer coming out of that Nice team. Here’s to hoping he resurrects his career at Lens.

• Chelsea are close to signing 21-year-old Ivory Coast defender Guela Doue from Rennes in a £7.6m deal. — Like we were saying, weird.

• The Hunt for Viktor Gyökeres has reportedly been joined by Liverpool and Spurs now. Kim was a bit more positive on him last week as a potential top PL target than I am, but this change in tone on the rumours makes me think there’s a strong agent-backed element to this now.

• Everton have signed Man Mountain Jake O’Brien from Lyon either in hopes of fielding the tallest centerback pairing in the league this season, or to have a replacement for Jarrad Branthwaite’s eventual move to Manchester.

• Speaking of, Everton have also loaned in Jesper Lindstrom, who was maybe pretty good at Eintracht Frankfurt a few years ago, but flamed out badly at Napoli. Pretty meh about this one.

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