Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly has defended the club’s failure to sign a new marquee centre-forward in each of the last two transfer windows.
The Blues were in the market for a new striker last summer and Chelsea were interested in Napoli’s Victor Osimhen but could not reach an agreement with the Italian club.
Osimhen later joined Galatasaray on a season-long loan deal, having been frozen out under Antonio Conte in Naples.
For much of the first half of the season, failing to land a new forward looked a blessing in disguise, with Nicolas Jackson in fine form, but the Senegalese had gone eight league games without a goal when picking up a hamstring injury against West Ham at the start of this month.
With Marc Guiu injured in the same game and Christopher Nkunku ineffective when deployed up-front, Enzo Maresca has been reduced to using Pedro Neto as a makeshift No9 in the Blues’s last two games.
“Strikers are hard to find,” Boehly said.
“You don’t go into the grocery store and say, ‘I am going to get a striker’. It is an amazing skillset and you have to have the right mentality.”
