I’m a big fan of Edinson Cavani on paper. His goals to games ratio is prolific and he’s coming to his peak age (if history is anything to go by with footballers).
What I see, I like and I like what I see. Unfortunately there are just a few problems with wanting to sign this player.
53 million problems…
We’ve seen very few players live up to their price tags once you go over a certain amount.
There are the now considered averagely expensive players like Downing, Henderson, Nasri and the like who, at around £20 million have not really done much to justify their price tag.
You go up a bracket and the modern transfers over £30 million still have players not performing to their ‘grade’. Andy Carroll at £35 million compared to Eden Hazard at £32 million is an interesting comparison. Without extensive knowledge of French football and by all means correct me if I’m wrong in my opinion but Pastore and Moura at PSG as well as Witsel at Zenit so far appear to be performing as equally averagely as Robinho did for Manchester City and Sheva for us.
Continuing up the scale and we reach our dear old Fernando Torres; a man trying so desperately hard to make things work at Chelsea that I’ve long forgotten how attractive the pay rise must’ve been when moving. There aren’t many footballers of a certain price and consistent failings that I want to succeed but he is one of them.
You could even bring in Ibrahimovic and his move to Barca. If you recall the deal cost Barca £59 million plus Samuel Eto’o. Eto’o was at that time an incredibly deadly striker and one who I always feared when playing Chelsea. Granted he was a little out of his comfort zone and no longer the ‘Giant fish in a tiny pool’, he did suffer somewhat from expectation.
So what am I grabbing at here with these wild opinions?
I honestly don’t believe that Cavani would be the success we’d ‘expect’ if we paid upwards of £50 million for him. I also can see blatantly obvious options closer to home and closer to Chelsea’s new policies of age and price.
Look at Rooney. I’m not his biggest fan by a long way but for the estimated £25 million we could get a similar aged player who thrives in this league for half the price of Cavani. The only downsides I can see are his wage demands and whether or not he would really want to play for the shirt.
Look at Edin Dzeko. 27 years old. 45 appearances last season in all competitions and 15 goals. Not a great stat. Then take into account that of those 45, only 23 were starts. Then remember back to the week in week out stories of Dzeko coming off the bench to ‘save’ Mancini and Citeh. I remember when Chelsea were interested in his services at Wolfsburg but we were content with Drogba for the time being. He’s a tall, confident striker who finishes very well for his size.
And look at Christian Benteke. The lad is 22 years old. First season in the Premier League with a severely struggling Aston Villa side and he bags 19 PL goals in 34 games. He’s Belgian and we all know where they like to play. Imagine him and Lukaku together week in week out and I think half the defenders in the league would retire! He’d take a decent pay rise but nothing stellar. He is currently paid 13,000 Euros a week… We could offer him £50,000 or £60,000 a week as a first team/squad player and still be saving hundreds of thousands over Cavani or Rooney. I think Villa would listen to any offers over £22 million for him and we’d be ticking all the boxes.
SO that’s my two-pence worth. Any comments?
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