Chelsea were heavily linked with a move to sign Michael Olise from Crystal Palace in the summer transfer window. The Blues were in the market for new signings in the forward positions, eventually signing Jadon Sancho on loan from Manchester United, Pedro Neto from Wolves and Joao Felix from Atletico Madrid.
Olise was high on the shortlist, however. Chelsea wanted to sign him and made an offer but football.london understands Palace took too long to respond and there were also reports that the financial package was deemed to be too large.
Bayern Munich stepped in and the Frenchman made the £60million move to the Bundesliga instead. Olise is well on track to win the German league title in his first season, with Bayern eight points clear of Bayer Leverkusen at the top of the table.
Olise has had an impressive campaign, netting 13 goals and providing 11 assists in 39 appearances, sparking up a good relationship with Harry Kane in the forward line.
And the full extent of Chelsea's transfer mistake has been laid bare by new information from the CIES Football Observatory.
The 495th CIES post looked at the world’s 100 best performing players from an attacking perspective in terms of their statistics in three areas of the game: take ons, chance creation and finishing. That came up with the best all-round attacker in Europe's top five leagues.
And Olise came out top of the rankings with an average index score of 88.5 in these three domains and a maximum value of 99 in chance creation. The Bayern star was ahead of Barcelona's Yamine Lamal and Bayer Leverkusen's Florian Wirtz.
Chelsea's best players on the list are Noni Madueke (78.8) and Cole Palmer (78.6).
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Chelsea ended the 2023/24 Premier League season on a high, but it is never quiet at Stamford Bridge and the summer looks set to be one full of news, with question marks over Mauricio Pochettino's future at the club and plenty of talk around transfers.
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