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Alvaro Morata's struggles are nothing new - both Chelsea's sourcing and handling of strikers are dreadful
Mateja Kezman, Hernan Crespo, Khalid Boulahrouz, Steve Sidwell, Franco Di Santo, Fernando Torres, Radamel Falcao and Alvaro Morata. Misfiring forwards, a central midfielder and a central defender: the list of players to sport the Chelsea number nine shirt since Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink left in 2004 does a fairly good job of highlighting the paucity of quality strikers that have blessed Stamford Bridge in recent years.
The centre-forward position has proven a problem that many a Chelsea manager has struggled to solve over the years, even with extraordinary sums spent on players and the roaring success of so many defenders and midfielders.
Number 11, Didier Drogba, and 17, Diego Costa are the exceptions if it is goals by which we judge strikers, though Drogba was truly prolific in only two of his nine seasons at the club while Costa’s temperament meant he was never going to stick around for a long time.
Only twice since Kerry Dixon in 1985 has a Chelsea player broken the 30-goal barrier in a season (those two goal-filled Drogba seasons), while in the Premier League era alone, Arsenal players have done so 12 times, Manchester United and Liverpool seven times each, and Harry Kane and Sergio Aguero have reached 30 goals seven times between them in the last seven seasons.
There have been plenty of seasons in the Premier League era - even in the time since they became a financial powerhouse under Roman Abramovich - in which Chelsea’s top scorer has been a midfielder such as Lampard, Florent Malouda and more recently Eden Hazard, with around 15 goals.
In the modern game, where Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, and more recently and closer to home Kane, Aguero, Luis Suarez, Robin van Persie and Mohamed Salah, have pushed goal-scoring standards of world class forwards up to a-goal-a-game, Chelsea have not kept up. Forwards have come and gone all too frequently, having scored too few goals.
Should it therefore come as little shock that Alvaro Morata is being ushered towards the exit door, a £60m flop that just could not adapt properly to the Premier League as a Chelsea player, or that Olivier Giroud has the blues in west London?
Morata is not the first forward Chelsea have spent heavily on (though he is the most expensive), and Chelsea’s previous big-money signings in his position suggest that price tags can weigh heavy.
Morata (£58m), Torres (£50m), Michy Batshuayi (£33.2m) and Andriy Shevchenko (£30.8m) make up more than £170m of attacking talent, yet have provided just 52 league goals in 237 Chelsea appearances.
For Morata and Torres in particular, the weight of expectation proved too great. The chopping-and-changing of managers and style of play cannot have helped any of those players.
There has been a theme of pragmatism among Chelsea’s managerial appointments over the years, and less in the way free-flowing, attacking football that might lay the foundations for the kind of goal-scoring Kane, Aguero and Salah have enjoyed.
Of the 18 times a team has scored more than 75 Premier League goals in a season since 2008, Chelsea account for just two. Each of Liverpool, Manchester City and United have done so at least four times.
In Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte, Rafa Benitez and now Maurizio Sarri, Chelsea have had managers that win but cannot be counted as anything like the Premier League’s great entertainers.
It is early days yet for Sarri to change that and fully implement peak Sarriball in London, but his decision to use Hazard at centre-forward is an admission of defeat with a traditional No 9. He might hope that the Belgian hits the kind of form that saw compatriot Dries Mertens hit 28 Serie A goals in 2016/17 at Napoli, but Hazard does not see that happening.
“We are different,” he said of Mertens after scoring both Chelsea goals in the Boxing Day win at Watford. “Dries is more of a striker than me. I am more like a playmaker. I like to come and touch the ball. Dries just wants to stay in the box. That's why he scores a lot of goals.”
Indeed, Hazard has been the main man at Chelsea for six-and-a-half years now, but he isn't an out-and-out goal-scorer. While very few would argue the club will be better off cashing in on him in the summer, there is an argument that a player of his ability who commands so much of the ball but doesn’t score as freely as the best strikers around might make the job of the player he plays alongside in some ways more difficult.
In much the same way that so much of Chelsea’s attacking play used to be based around getting Lampard into scoring positions, Hazard is the centre of proceedings these days. He will not detract from the team’s attacking threat, but his presence does mean it will never be all about Morata or Giroud in the way that Spurs always want to get Kane in front of goal or Liverpool do Salah.
With hindsight, recruitment has looked questionable, with too many Chelsea forwards signed beyond their peak. Talk this month of a move for Gonzalo Higuain suggests they might not be learning from their mistakes.
Higuain scored 16 league goals in 35 appearances for Juventus last season, and has hit just six in 15 games on loan at AC Milan this term. He has just turned 31, so he is at a stage in his career where he may have a few years at the top left in him, but could also be on the way out.
The cursed number nine jersey is free once again at Stamford Bridge. But it might be wise for Higuain to avoid it.