Chelsea ‘offered’ new option at striker as Alvaro Morata joins Real Madrid preseason tour

Chelsea’s Great Summer 2017 Striker Search continues in earnest today with a bit of good news and bad news, real news and fake news. Oh sorry, we agreed to call them transfer rumors, not fake news. Transfer rumors! Gotta love them.

First up, the bad news.

As soon as Chelsea were gazumped for Lukaku — though Big Rom himself has revealed that he’s basically been working on a move to United for 18 months, so did we really even have a chance? — the Blues were immediately linked back to Real Madrid’s Alvaro Morata, whom we supposedly pursued last summer as well and who was once signed by Antonio Conte at Juventus (though Conte left before they could actually work together). So that’s all fine and well, but Morata’s price is somewhere in the £60-80m range, and that makes any Chelsea bid a fairly questionable decision. But there’s been no real indication other than idle chatter that Chelsea are willing to pay that much (£60m, maybe; £80m probably not), and now, Morata has joined Real Madrid’s pre-season tour of the USA. While he could certainly still be sold while on tour, that’s not really a good sign if you want him to come to Chelsea.

But never fear, Morata is not the end all, be all of potential striker signings. In fact, according to Sky Sports, Chelsea have been “offered the chance” to sign Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Which basically means that BVB want to drum up some action on their 28-year-old striker who looks set to leave, possibly to AC Milan, possibly to China, possibly to ... Chelsea? PEA would also cost upwards of €80m, with wage demands of €12m per year (£205k per week). Yikes. (Although there are also rumors that he’s going to stay in Dortmund.)

And before you bring up Andrea Belotti, who may be available at something below his €100m buyout, Torino appear very willing to do whatever it takes to keep him there. Their chairman also confirmed that they have received no bids for the 23-year-old, possibly due to his outrageous price tag.

There are no easy solutions for Chelsea at striker should Diego Costa not return, which remains the expected outcome there.