It’s a standard football club PR move to spread some juicy transfer stories after nasty losses, and few things play better after last night’s 3-2 loss to West Ham than Chelsea are looking for. ax to the withered flower Kepa Arrizabalaga while making another big stir at The Market with Kai Havertz.
Even if none of those moves would necessarily prevent another bad start at the Olympic Stadium.
For Havertz, the word is that we are “ready to step up” our search, which, as we know, is at least two steps above “monitoring.” Careful world!
The Telegraph argues that Havertz is “close” to the top of our wish list and that our “desire to improve” our attack has not been deterred by recent defensive pitfalls, or the fact that we have scored two or more goals. in each one of them. our last six games, something we haven’t done in six years. Citing unidentified German media reports, the report adds that an offer is expected once Havertz plays his last game for Bayer Leverkusen, ironically, that will be against Bayern Munich, which is also hot on its heels, but perhaps only for the next summer.
But hey, winning 5-4 is better than winning 1-0, right? After all, we remain the top four despite our second worst defensive record in the Premier League era.
While Matt Law’s report mentions Ben Chilwell, who will also not solve our defensive problems on his own, the emphasis in terms of stopping bleeding at the back is Kepa Arrizabalaga, who is apparently back in the [SHIRT] list (the T-shirts with the stupid cartoon logo ‘3’, that is) after his weak performance against West Ham.
While not directly guilty of the targets, Kepa displayed all the characteristics of the unquantifiable evil that we have come to know and love, including an unimpressive distribution (both short and long term), lack of confidence to face shots, or 1-v-1, and an extreme lack of command in and around his six-yard box.
It seems that Kepa’s recovery in form just before closing was short-lived.
The problem with any intention to move Kepa is, of course, the countless millions invested in him. No one is going to pay close to € 80 million for it, and that was true even before the pandemic. Few could afford their £ 150k wages, especially among those who really need a new doorman. Most teams that can pay that much have their goalkeeper situations well established or planned.
The report states that unidentified teams in La Liga are interested in a potential loan, but Chelsea would have to subsidize Kepa’s wages. We would also have to find a replacement, and at the moment, there is apparently no “obvious candidate” for that. I’m not sure what happened to André Onana or Dean Henderson or some of the others linked above.
And of course losing the Champions League next year would make all of this, the Kais and Kepas, much less feasible.
