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Good news, everyone! Also, bad news, everyone! Let's go with the good news first.
Speaking to journalists ahead of Sunday's final match of the season, Jose Mourinho confirmed that we are indeed looking to bring in a new striker this summer. Of course, unless you've been living under a rock since January, this shouldn't come as a surprise. But when Mourinho talks about it as if it's the most normal thing in the world, well, then I get just that extra bit more hopeful that we'll get a non-geriatric, supremely confident, battle-tested, top tier talent. I'm guessing his name will be Diego Costa, though I'd much rather spell it as Edinson Cavani.
"A striker is something we have been speaking about for a long time,' he said. 'In December/January, when you were all asking and trying to understand why we weren't bringing one in, I said it's something we were working on and preparing for the long-term future, not just an immediate solution to try to help us for the rest of the season."
"It's normal that we are going to bring a striker, it's normal we want to improve. We have good strikers, we have good players and we are not in a desperate situation, but every team wants the summer window to improve, and one area where we want to improve, which we've made clear since January, is the striker's position. We have three at the moment, normally one is coming and one is leaving."
-Jose Mourinho; source: Chelsea FC
I'm sure we'll find out in due time if that should be understood as only one in and one out, or as at least one in and out, or as normally it would be just one but this time, we're going to launch all three of them out of a cannon and instead go with New Guy, plus Romelu Lukaku, and, say, the statue of Peter Osgood.
Unfortunately, and this is where the bad news comes in, due time will likely be longer than most of us would like: probably a couple months from the end of the season. And that's just when the big wheels will start turning, nowhere near dottled-line-signature-time...
"More and more, if the window is open until 31 August people delay, they react and wait to see what is happening with their own players. It's very difficult to finalise deals early, especially with the World Cup. Now the players disappear and go to the World Cup so it's more of a time to find a direction and analyse details, to decide the project for next season, the project for the transfer window and make the deals happen."
-Jose Mourinho; source: Chelsea FC
Let's hope the World Cup (June 12 - July 13) will be entertaining enough to tide us over until then.
