One of the interesting facts about the current crop of strikers Chelsea currently has, consisting of Fernando Torres, Samuel Eto’o and Demba Ba, is that they’ve scored less (combined) for the club since the beginning of last season, while loaned out Romelu Lukaku or gotten rid of Daniel Sturridge have outscored them on their new teams.
Wins aren’t getting the pressure off of Jose Mourinho, who expected a little bit of gratitude from the English press for coming back from Spain. Instead, he’s actually being asked questions about not playing well, about benching excellent players and being challenged about his managerial skills.
One of his decisions early in the offseason was to keep Romelu Lukaku, thinking the young Belgian player has what it takes to win a place in the lineup, while his two others strikers, Fernando Torres and Demba Ba, weren’t exactly shaping up to be what he needed.
However, just before the transfer deadline, Lukaku was loaned out to Everton, while Chelsea signed an older and much more expensive Samuel Eto’o. Daniel Sturridge was sold midway through last season to Liverpool, and it had nothing to do with Mourinho.
So far this season, Torres, Ba and Eto’o have combined for 0 league goals. Sturridge has scored four for Liverpool, and Lukaku already has one for Everton. Maybe missing the penalty kick against Bayern Munich was what got him kicked off the team, as Jose Mourinho isn’t too lenient on mistakes that cost him titles.
Eto’o wasn’t part of the outfit last season, but the Torres-Ba combo scored 1o league goals for Chelsea. Lukaku and Sturridge, on their respective teams? Lukaku scored 17 for West Brom, while Sturridge scored 10 goals in the few months he was at Liverpool last season, after scoring once for Chelsea in 7 matches before January.
The match? Torres and Demba Ba have 10 goals for Chelsea since the beginning of last season (although Ba played until January for Newcastle), while Lukaku and Sturridge have scored 32 goals for other clubs.