Chelsea will become Man City's main rival even without Haaland | OneFootball

BILD Sport reported in early March that Erling Haaland has no interest in joining Chelsea.

The Borussia Dortmund striker is likely to be the centre of one hell of a transfer saga this summer and if he does decide to leave the Westfalenstadion, his next suitors will become one of the most feared teams in Europe.

There isn’t any club in European football that doesn’t need someone like Haaland – the 20-year-old has finishing ability reminiscent of Ronaldo Nazário.

But Chelsea are a serious problem to the rest of the continent – even without the Norwegian.

The 2020/21 season could end up being a successful one for Chelsea.

They have an FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City to look forward to and after drawing Porto in the Champions League, they are in with a good chance of making the final four.

And next season they are already in a perfect place to challenge Pep Guardiola’s side for the Premier League crown, finishing anywhere below the top two should be considered a failure.

The arrival of Thomas Tuchel as head coach in January has given Roman Abramovich what he has always desired at Stamford Bridge – an elite level coach.

Chelsea were languishing in ninth when the German arrived and not many would’ve anticipated that they would be still be waiting to taste their first defeat together 14 games later.

The 47-year-old has set out to do what every coach does at the start of their reign and made the Blues solid and hard to beat.

And then some … Chelsea have conceded just two goals under their new head coach.

There are obvious improvements that need to be made, particularly in attack.

Chelsea are yet to score more than two goals in any game under Tuchel but the answer to that is already within the squad, rather than needing to spend another substantial amount of money on Haaland.

Around £250m was spent on new arrivals last summer, and there is an expectation that the attacking players that have been brought in will produce the goods under the teachings of their new coach.

Kai Havertz is the jewel in the crown of Germany’s future. Timo Werner has been involved in 13 goal contributions in 28 games and let’s not forget how effective Hakim Ziyech was in Ajax’s run to the Champions League semi-finals in 2019.

There’s no way that attack doesn’t purr at some point.

The embarrassment of riches that Tuchel has at his disposal means he can operate with a ‘horses for courses’ type approach to each individual game.

Needing an attacker to win an aerial battle against the likes of Burnley? He can call on Olivier Giroud.

Chelsea can bring in the likes of Mason Mount to that forward line if they need to unlock a low-block defence and there’s still Christian Pulisic, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham to consider.

There is unlikely to be any big movements in the transfer market anywhere this summer considering the situation around the pandemic, despite the bombardment of speculation.

If things were to remain pretty much the same at Stamford Bridge in terms of incomings and outgoings then it wouldn’t do too much damage to Chelsea’s chances of success.

Tuchel has fixed the defence, how he wants his attack to operate will become clear in due course.

When it does, expect Chelsea to be right on Manchester City’s coattails.