Where do Lukaku and Werner rank among Chelsea's worst striker flops?

Stuart Telford

• 9 Aug 2022 11:45 CDT
• 4 min read

Chelsea have sold Romelu Lukaku and Timo Werner this summer as they get rid of two of their biggest striker flops in one window

Chelsea have had a rough history with strikers in recent years, leading to suggestions that their number nine shirt could be 'cursed', with Romelu Lukaku the latest occupant to depart after a disappointing stint.

Lukaku returned to Inter Milan on loan after a disastrous £100m move last year, while Timo Werner followed him out of the exit door, returning to Leipzig for €20m after just ten league goals in 56 games.

Chelsea have had some great strikers in their time, but for every Didier Drogba or Diego Costa there have been just as many attackers who have failed to live up to their billing.

Football Transfers looks at five of the worst...

5) Alvaro Morata

Alvaro Morata signed from Real Madrid in the summer of 2017 for more than €70 million, the hope being that he would adequately replace the Atletico Madrid-bound Costa.

Costa had scored 20 goals in 35 games as Chelsea won the Premier League the previous season, and while Morata wasn't that far behind the following campaign with 11 in 31, the Blues' title defence ended with failure to even qualify for the Champions League.

Followed Costa to Atletico two seasons later, initially on loan.

4) Timo Werner

Chelsea shelled out €56 million to activate Werner's RB Leipzig's release clause in June 2020. Germany's first-choice striker at the time, Werner was coming off the back of a season in which he had plundered 28 goals and eight assists in 34 Bundesliga games.

Fans may have subsequently baulked at his return of just six goals in that first Premier League season, but he did at least contribute 12 assists alongside. But Werner has become progressively more ineffectual, with his countryman Kai Havertz now converted from midfielder to attacker to try and make up for it.

Despite Werner's work-rate and team play which led Chelsea to a Champions League title in 2021, his underwhelming goal return saw him return to Leipzig the following year for €20m.

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3) Fernando Torres

A hero for Atletico and then Liverpool, Fernando Torres generated significant excitement and column inches when he joined Chelsea from the Reds for a then-British record £50 million/€59m in January 2011.

Hi last full season at Liverpool returned 18 goals in 22 Premier League games, and he had another nine in the first half of that campaign, but Liverpool apparently knew something everyone else didn't, and Torres failed to break double-digit goal hauls across his next four seasons in West London.

Would be higher on this list if he hadn't helped Chelsea past Barcelona on the way to their Champions League triumph in 2012.

2) Andriy Shevchenko

Earlier in the Roman Abramovich era, Chelsea were keen to show that they could attract some of the biggest names in world football, and that's something they did with the €43.9 million signing of Andriy Shevchenko in May 2006.

But Drogba was Mourinho's go-to striker before Shevchenko arrived, and he remained it after. Sheva might have been Ukraine's record goalscorer and a Champions League winner with Milan, but he could only manage nine goals in 48 Premier League appearances with Chelsea.

1) Romelu Lukaku

The sheer amount of money involved with Romelu Lukaku and Chelsea - combined with his sheer lack of cutting edge - means that the Belgian comes out ahead of the likes of Torres and Shevchenko in the pantheon on Chelsea's attacking flops.

A self-confessed Chelsea fan, Lukaku returned for a second spell at Chelsea at the start of last season for a cool €116 million fee. A lot of money, yes, but Lukaku had banged in 24 goals and added a further 10 assists as Inter Milan had lifted the Serie A title in 2020/21.

But he just couldn't get going at Chelsea, recording just seven touches in one game against Crystal Palace, and returned to Inter on loan this summer with just eight league goals to his name.