Chelsea should take prime opportunity to snatch £44m prodigy from under West Ham’s nose
The Blues are understood to be on the hunt for attacking talent, while West Ham’s move for Mohammed Kudus has seemingly hit problems.
Do you know what I’d really like to see? Todd Boehly on Bargain Hunt. Give that bloke £300, one hour, and a novelty coloured fleece and I reckon he could produce horrors of judgement the likes of which British daytime television has never seen. Then again, most car boot sales don’t really account for amortisation.
How one man can spend so much money and yet still end up so far from his intended goal is endlessly, intensely, perversely fascinating. If you didn’t know better, you would swear that he is some kind of malicious double agent, a pearl-grinned saboteur tasked with bringing down Chelsea’s entire operation from the inside. That being said, perhaps such an assumption would give him too much credit. Maybe he’s just really, really bad at negotiating transfers.
On Sunday, the shortcomings that still plague this lavishly-assembled Chelsea squad were laid startlingly bare in a 3-1 defeat to West Ham. Given the Blues’ recent form, and their apparent obsession with single-handedly stocking the Premier League’s vast reserves of schadenfreude, you didn’t have to be Lucas Paqueta’s nearest and dearest to see this kind of mishap coming. Mauricio Pochettino’s men toiled and stuttered at the London Stadium - even against 10-men - and the introduction of British record signing Moises Caicedo, who did little besides concede a late penalty, was ineffective to the point of detrimental. Chalk that one up in the ‘bad debuts’ column alongside Jonathan Woodgate, the Titanic and that weird first attempt at a live action Sonic the Hedgehog.
But if Mr. Boehly is in the mood for: A) petty retribution, and B) continuing the spending habit of a lifetime, then he could deal a hammer blow to the, well, Hammers by making a big money bid to hijack their ongoing pursuit of Ajax talent Mohammed Kudus.
According to The Guardian, David Moyes and his claret boys are eager to lure the Ghanaian to the Premier League in the latter stages of the transfer window, but are being met with a frustrating amount of resistance from his current employers. An offer of £41 million or so has been snubbed, and it is understood that Ajax will not budge so much as an inch unless a further £3 million is found from somewhere.
What West Ham are failing to realise, however, is that £3 million split over eight years is only £375,000 per annum. Amateurs.
Facetiousness aside, there are genuine reasons as to why Kudus could be that rarest of phenomena - an astute Chelsea signing. Up until last week, it seemed inevitable that the Blues would wrap up a deal for Crystal Palace winger Michael Olise. Perhaps they would have been successful too, were it not for pesky things like perhaps the potential threat of legal action.
Regardless, it does mean, in the estimations of the owner and/or manager at least, that Chelsea are one attacking sandwich short of a picnic. Kudus, for his part, would offer them a versatile and precocious option who can play out wide, but who can just as easily operate in central areas.
Last season, he registered 18 goals and seven assists in 42 appearances across all competitions, and he already has two goal contributions in two outings this term. There is a reason why his footballing intelligence and technical ability has been praised by everybody from Thierry Henry to Marco van Basten, and why he is near-unanimously deemed to be the next bona fide all-conquering African star.
At the time of writing, he is the second-highest rated player in the Eredivisie, according to Whoscored, and nobody in the Dutch top flight averaged more completed dribbles per 90 minutes than the 23-year-old during the 2022/23 campaign.
It is only a matter of time before he makes a move to one of Europe’s truly elite divisions, and the list of clubs who have already been linked with him at some point in the recent past reads like a who’s who of continental royalty. In other words, for Chelsea to pilfer him from beneath West Ham’s noses would be a real coup.
Boehly’s tenure in the boardroom thus far has been hallmarked by baffling extravagance after baffling extravagance. Often it has felt as if the needs of his squad have been of lesser significance to him than the desire to dominate his perceived rivals in the cut and thrust cockfight of the transfer market.
Signing Kudus, however, would allow him to kill two birds with one £44 million stone. Not only would he be delivering a bloody nose to the Irons, but he would also be bringing in a player who has the world at his feet and is just waiting for the right opportunity to prove as much. It’s a deal of which even David Dickinson or Tim Wonnacott would approve.