Erling Haaland to Chelsea: Ranking Blues' big striker signings amid £150m transfer chase | OneFootball

Although clearly not an exact science, caution must be applied when it comes to dreaming about just how good Chelsea would be with a prolific striker.

Granted, there are an abundance of reasons to imagine Erling Haaland's potential arrival at Stamford Bridge being enough to help Thomas Tuchel translate his conquering of Europe into a Premier League context.

At just 20, the £150m-rated Norwegian international looks like the most feared central striker in the game at the moment, with so much more still to learn.

To suggest that excitement must be tempered would perhaps put any observer into doom-mongering territory. Still, Roman Abramovich's time in charge of Chelsea has led to a number of poor signings on the striker front, with largely being the only position in which the Russian's money hasn't always helped the club.

So, for anyone outside of the Chelsea bubble looking for reasons to be optimistic that Haaland's potential signing won't instantly make them title-winners, GIVEMESPORT have ranked some of them from worst to best.

Chelsea are set to launch ANOTHER Erling Haaland bid! Find out all the details on The Football Terrace...

12) Fernando Torres

In terms of disappointment, Fernando Torres has to be the biggest in Chelsea's recent history.

That famous moment at Camp Nou aside, the Spaniard looked a shell of his Liverpool self pretty much from the day he arrived and, ironically, made his debut against his former club at Stamford Bridge in an anonymous display back in 2011.

Not even winning the Champions League and the FA Cup made his then British transfer record of £50m worth it.

11) Andriy Shevchenko

Like Torres, Andriy Shevchenko joined Chelsea whilst on a downward trajectory.

One of the most fearsome forwards in football during a glittering spell with AC Milan between 1999 and 2006, three years in west London yielded only 22 goals, with the great Ukrainian unable to compete with Didier Drogba.

10) Alvaro Morata

Alvaro Morata is arguably the most apologetic striker in world football.

While clearly a talented player, it's easy to forget just what a career he's had and the clubs he's represented over the course of it and his time at Chelsea was largely uneventful.

For a reported £60m, the Spaniard lasted only 18 months before Atletico Madrid brought him back to La Liga. During that period, Morata scored 24 times and was another big signing who struggled to replicate the success of his predecessor in Diego Costa.

9) Radamel Falcao

A loan signing (albeit an expensive one) but temporary enough not to have him ranking lower, Radamel Falcao's time at Chelsea was equally as bad as his spell with Manchester United.

Although his second act at Monaco was pleasing to see as El Tigre raged against the dying light of his top level career in Europe, it's hard to put any kind of positive spin on his Chelsea days.

8) Romelu Lukaku

Including Romelu Lukaku in this particular rogue's gallery is harsh on one of the world's best strikers to have scored goals wherever he's been.

Indeed, Chelsea failed Lukaku. Not the other way around. Although that will do little to make watching him rack up the goals for club and country and less galling.

7) Michy Batshuayi

Michy Batshuayi did score the goal that technically won Antonio Conte the league title but, frankly, someone was going to at one point. While certainly a highlight and something that will write him into club folklore, the £33m spent on the Belgian rarely looked like ever truly being repaid.

Into the final year of his deal and having done little to suggest the club can recoup that kind of money, his signing is exactly the kind that led to suggestions the club were simply signing players so their rivals couldn't.

6) Demba Ba

Not exactly a headline arrival after Chelsea activated a £7m release clause in his deal but Demba Ba did his job and he did his job well.

Of course, there was a standout moment as Jose Mourinho's side helped stop Liverpool from winning the league in 2014 but focusing on that would be doing Ba a disservice. In far from a vintage side, the Senegal striker scored a crucial goal to send Chelsea through to the Champions League semi-finals against PSG.

For the relatively little outlay invested in Ba, he was a successful signing as the club looked to build back towards the summit of English football.

5) Timo Werner

Controversial perhaps but Timo Werner still has a lot to prove.

Like Torres before him, the German has helped form part of a Champions League-winning team, although was not as central a figure as many would have hoped. Clearly, that's really rather a first-world problem in the grand scheme of things, but the standards a superclub Chelsea hold their stars to do demand more.

The jury is still out.

4) Hernan Crespo

With success sandwiched between a loan spell at AC Milan, Hernan Crespo's time at Chelsea is thoroughly underrated.

12 goals in 31 games during his first season was barely a failure and, after almost winning the Champions League in Istanbul before the biggest collapse a modern-day final had ever seen, Crespo returned to help Jose Mourinho win his second league title on the bounce.

3) Nicolas Anelka

Plucked from lower down the Premier League after rediscovering his form at Bolton, Nicolas Anelka was an excellent signing for Chelsea. One of few big striker signings that actually developed a partnership with Drogba, the Frenchman played a pivotal role in the free-scoring side under Carlo Ancelotti that won a first Premier League title without Jose Mourinho.

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2) Diego Costa

The second-best striker signing of the Abramovich era, Diego Costa's time at Chelsea yielded two Premier League titles.

Although success in Europe evaded him, the Brazilian-born Spanish international was largely unplayable between 2014 and 2016, having little problem replicating the kind of form that took Atletico Madrid to an unlikely La Liga win prior to this arrival.

A swift text message from Antonio Conte might have led to things ending sourly but 58 goals and 24 assists in 120 games for the club was a fantastic return on their £32m investment.

1) Didier Drogba

The King.

Mourinho urged people to judge Drogba when he left the club after a difficult time of things upon his signing for Marseille and, when that day finally came, the naysayers must have been hating every minute of it.

A three-time Premier League winner in his first spell, the Ivorian scored 9 goals in 10 cup finals, including a dramatic late leveler in Bayern Munich's back garden to take the Champions League final to extra time.

From there, he was the man who cooly slotted the winning penalty to finally bring the most coveted prize in the game back to Stamford Bridge.

The embodiment of Chelsea's first era under Abramovich, Drogba was a transformative signing.