The likelihood of Chelsea's starting attack for the 2022/23 season looking different appears high as Todd Boehly has moved quickly to start assembling the rebuild Thomas Tuchel desires at Stamford Bridge.
News of a deal being agreed for Leeds winger Raphinha sent shockwaves across the Twittersphere, mainly to shell shocked Arsenal fans, who had assumed the Brazilian would be rocking up at London Colney, with his compatriot Gabriel Jesus looking highly likely to join the Gunners.
In Raphinha, Tuchel is getting a pure wide player, an attacking maverick who is designed to get fans off their seats and hopefully add more invention to an area that was much maligned last season.
READ MORE: Chelsea agree £65m Raphinha transfer as Raheem Sterling signing edges closer
Chelsea's pre-season officially begins over the weekend with the first batch of players returning to Cobham, while those involved in June's internationals will join up with the squad on July 9 as the tour of the USA begins in Los Angeles. By then, it will be under a month until Chelsea begin their Premier League season at Goodison Park.
There is a lot that can still happen until Tuchel names his first starting line-up of the league campaign, but following the news of Raphinha being close to swapping Elland Road for the Fulham Road, it is fun to speculate over a potential attacking set-up with new faces.
Tuchel did show signs of evolving his 3-4-2-1 formation into a 4-3-3 and 4-2-2-2 during the tricky winter months when options were limited last season. With the pursuit of wide attackers like Raphinha and Raheem Sterling, there may be some credence to the theory that Tuchel is looking to shift away from a three-man defence in a more concrete way.
Taking out one defender opens up more room for Chelsea's plethora of options to get more minutes. Within the current formation Tuchel has regularly gone with, you would expect only one of Raphinha or Sterling would make the cut, given Chelsea's player of the season for the last two seasons running, Mason Mount, has become an essential playmaker.
Both Mount and Raphinha would likely be competing for the right-hand spot, whilst Sterling has mostly been used from the left for Manchester City and England. With Romelu Lukaku going back to Inter Milan on loan, Kai Havertz is most likely to fill the centre-forward role as he did for periods of last season and showed signs he could provide a consistent source of goals and creativity.
However, if Tuchel were to move away from the expected set-up, we could see Mount drop back into a deeper midfield role, something he consistently did under Frank Lampard and on a few occasions for Tuchel.
This would allow Raphinha to occupy the wide role he mostly played at Leeds in a 4-1-4-1 under Marcelo Bielsa, and similar variations under Jesse Marsch. It would also offer room for the rest of Chelsea's attackers to gain more minutes across the season.
At the moment it is hard to gauge which of the current Chelsea squad will still remain, with rumours swirling of Timo Werner, Christian Pulisic and Hakim Ziyech all departing. It seems unlikely all three will go, but two leaving would open up space for the slightly forgotten Callum Hudson-Odoi to remerge and compete with Sterling for minutes off the left.
Boehly is investing in players that will hopefully upgrade an underperforming area - Tuchel now has an opportunity to field a more Premier League-proven line-up.
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