A little red and white chaffinch landed on my shoulder yesterday, otherwise known as one of my equivalents at another website with his own set of sources – and informed me Stoke have enquired about the possibility of signing Daniel Sturridge on a season-long loan.
Whilst it’s wide public knowledge that Stoke are looking to ship out James Beattie and Dave Kitson, and Chelsea less than certain to retain Joe Cole – it still comes as a shock that the word is Chelsea have NOT dismissed the idea out of hand.
Daniel’s performances this season have ranged from good to excellent, restricted to substitute appearances the forward netted in successive FA Cup matches and notched himself his first Premier League goal ironically enough against Stoke in April.
What implications can this have for Chelsea?
Let’s stay on the rational side for the moment. Fabio Borini’s progress is being tracked closely by Carlo Ancelotti, with the young Italian impressing recently in youth international runouts and getting on the scoresheet. To say he is ready to fill Sturridge’s boots seems a little premature, so it seems unlikely this is the plan.
Franco Di Santo, the somewhat forgotten man, has returned from his exile to Blackburn. His initial months at the Lancashire club were positive if not fruitful. Good performances, assists, workrate, excellent movement only part concealed his lack of goals however –which in turn served to sour his experience and the confidence of his manager in his abilities. Franco left Blackburn at the end of this season with a parting shot over the quality of player and tactics. Whilst it’s not impossible the argentine could come into the squad the loan at Blackburn can’t exactly have filled the club or Carlo with confidence.
The arrival of Scott Sinclair and Miroslav Stoch (with absolutely polar levels of success this season) can’t be used as evidence for letting an undoubtedly talented striker capable of scoring against top opposition leave..so let’s not do that.
Were Daniel to leave it would mean we once again faced a season with three senior strikers, two of which are in their 30’s and the other sporadically infuriating (although in fairness to Kalou his final few weeks of the season were excellent).
The verdict?
Either we’re going to go into a season short on players up front or the club have very real plans to pursue the stalemate situation with Sergio Aguero in a bid to spend money on filling two positions (Joe Cole and Daniel Sturridge). A further consideration in this, when looking at it in writing, is that we would be losing one or two English players – which makes meeting our quotas more difficult.
All in all it’s not impossible Dan could go to Stoke next season and would be an undoubted success leading to a positive future with Chelsea – the doubts really lay over whether Chelsea are prepared to allow him to leave, especially with Scruge McGourlay holding the purse strings...
Rumour? 5/10...really can’t call this one, bit of a curve ball.
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