Mourinho: Chelsea will pick up "foreign striker" to replace Fernando Torres

Despite Jose Mourinho's feigned surprise regarding Fernando Torres' departure, it's pretty obvious that Chelsea knew what was coming. Heck, the manager, talking to Get West London, admitted as such as soon as the press embargo went up, claiming that the club already have some ideas for replacements (we've been linked to Roma's Mattia Destro and QPR's Loïc Rémy):

We have our ideas [for a replacement] and we have our contacts. We’ll try to make the best possible deal for us. We have to imagine the situation [that Torres will join Milan]. We have to anticipate the situation. Obviously we know that AC Milan and the agents, we know about the contacts, and a big club like AC Milan is not doing contacts behind Chelsea's back. No way. Milan doesn’t behave that way, so obviously we know [what is happening].

He also dropped a helpful hint as to who we might be chasing. That is: definitely not anyone English (which is mostly just Danny Welbeck). A non-homegrown player will be coming in to replace Torres:

If we have to react to Fernando’s departure we are going to react to a foreign striker. I don’t see in the market an English striker that would come to us or the club would let him come to us. If we lose a foreign striker we will get another foreign striker.

All in all I think we can be pretty confident that Chelsea will be able to get a favourable deal in place before the transfer window. I find it difficult to imagine that we'll end up getting screwed in the market just because this is happening at the last minute -- we're getting pretty good at this whole 'transfers' thing by now. Whether it's Rémy, Destro or someone else, we'll have our three-striker setup in place on September 2nd.

And I, for one, am looking forward to the new Chelsea attack. Let's go win things!