It’s tough to be a Chelsea fan these days. There’s a storm of poor results that has left Graham Potter on the radar of unpleasant fans and the fading attack has only led to lacklustre performances.
The result — Chelsea sits in the 10th position in the Premier League and ten points away from the top four.
This was not Todd Boehly’s desire when he took over the reins of the club from the Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich. But Boehly is a man on a mission, a mission to reignite the engines of Chelsea’s forward line.
In the ongoing transfer window, Boehly has secured the service of Joao Felix from Atletico Madrid on a six-month loan deal which will see the Portuguese forward at Stamford Bridge until the end of this season.
RB Leipzig’s superstar, Christoper Nkunku is also on his way to Chelsea this summer after Boehly paid an impressive fee of €70 million to finalize the deal.
But why is Chelsea on a whim to sign all the attacking options available to them?
It’s because Armando Broja has sustained a season-long injury during the World Cup break, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has been ineffective with only one goal in the Blues jersey, Kai Havertz has been underperforming and Mason Mount cannot be relied upon for consistency.
This all has Potter extremely worried. Hence, if he doesn’t sign quality forwards to solve Chelsea’s goal-scoring problem, he will surely be shown the door.
However, with Felix coming on board this month and Nkunku in July, Chelsea have found itself in a new conundrum.
The club now has Felix, Havertz, Aubameyang, Mount, and Sterling, all gunning for the same position or positions on the field.
It’s good to have options and depth on your bench but to have players of similar qualities whose style of play is almost identical will create confusion.
Felix, Havertz, Aubameyang, Sterling Mount and then Nkunku all trying to run into the same half-space: pic.twitter.com/dgQfj3REqO
Even if you have 2-3 of these players trying to exploit the same space, the plan of the manager will never be executed and only instil envy among the players since everyone wants to etch their name on the scoresheet, doing what they inherently know.
This has invited reactions from the online community who have coined new terms for these players whose positions on the field are still unclear at Chelsea.
Joao Felix, Nkunku and Havertz all running around for 90 minutes straight asking each other where they should stand on the pitch is going to be some sight to witness.
No one knows where Felix, Havertz, or Nkunku will be deployed on the pitch by their manager Graham Potter but given their similar abilities to play football, it will be hard to put them all together in the starting XI. It’s unwise to have three players do one job.
The terms however which the netizens are using for Nkunku, Havertz, and Felix are ‘Mythfielders’ and ‘Fauxwards.’
Felix, Havertz and Nkunku front 3 is going to absolutely finish me just 3 Mythfielders running around doing nothing https://t.co/SzORne2abL
It signifies that it’s only a myth that they can be put in midfield and ‘faux’ in fauxwards which means fake or false, tells us that they are not all true candidates to lead the forward line.
So that leaves the debate open about Felix, Nkunku, and Havertz’s future at Chelsea and also brings in the question — where will Mount, Sterling, and Hakim Ziyech play?
