3 strikers with release clauses could be Chelsea targets if bids for elite options fail | OneFootball

This summer there are a few cheap striker options likely to be on the market, and Chelsea are certainly sniffing around.

In January they were linked with both Artem Dovbyk and Serhou Guirassy, and while neither striker went anywhere in the end, both are on the market this summer. Matteo Moretti’s latest update for CaughtOffside on the matter explains how the two of them, along with Villareal striker Alexander Sorloth, are both set to be at the centre of an interesting number 9 market.

“One of the players that Atletico Madrid have asked about is Serhou Guirassy of Stuttgart, who has a very low release clause of just €17.5m,” Moretti wrote, in the context of La Liga interest in these forwards.

“I’m told that it is more feasible that Artem Dovbyk leaves Girona, than Sorloth leaves Villarreal. And the two have a similar price, Sorloth’s clause is €38m, and Dovbyk’s €40m.”

None of those look like the bargain that Jackson was, and none really have the look of the truly top class number 9 we want. But depending on sales and how our negotiations go for bigger targets, we wouldn’t rule them out.

Three tempting targets with a fixed price

We haven’t heard many concrete links between Chelsea and any of these guys since January, but we certainly wouldn’t rule anything out. The fact that all 3 have release clauses will be extremely tempting for us, as we saw with the deal to bring Sorloth’s old colleague Nicolas Jackson to Stamford Bridge last summer.

The different between getting stuck in a bidding war with the notoriously intransigent Napoli over Victor Osimhen or being able to snap up one of these guys for a fixed fee is pretty massive, and if we get to later in the summer and Chelsea still feel light up front, we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see moves made in this direction.