Chelsea’s signing of Gonzalo Higuain appears to be a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, but the club’s hoping that the exact ‘when’ happens sometime in the next 24 hours, or sooner so that he can be involved this weekend when Chelsea travel across town to face Arsenal at the Emirates.
That’s according to Simon Johnson of the Evening Standard, who’s the latest to confirm this impending deal at the same time. (Welcome, Gonzalo!)
#cfc are trying to complete #Higuain deal in time for him to make his debut at #afc. More here: https://t.co/xFzPGvCwtA
— Simon Johnson (@sjstandardsport) January 17, 2019
The match against Arsenal only kicks off at 5:30pm local time Saturday night, but Premier League rules stipulate that for players to be eligible, they have to be registered with the league by midday on the Friday before. So that gives Chelsea less than 24 hours from now to get this thing over the line, which seems highly optimistic.
Even if Chelsea are not able to finalize the deal in time, the expectation shows that one of the expected benefits of signing Higuain is his assumed similarity with Sarri’s system. Hopefully he didn’t forget too much about it (and about goalscoring in general) in the 2.5 years since.