Chelsea look set to pursue another striker after landing Liam Delap - but their rumoured next move could be an unwise one
Despite securing Champions League football and some silverware, Chelsea aren’t wasting any time overhauling their attack for the 2025/26 season – and Enzo Maresca’s front line is set to have a fresh look following the recently-opened summer transfer window. Still, the initial reaction to one proposed deal hasn’t gone down well across the board.
Some analysts and supporters have raised concerns over whether the Frenchman would be a good fit for Maresca’s system at Chelsea – but are they right to be worried about an evidently gifted forward who scored 22 goals in the 2024/25 campaign, seven more than anyone in the current squad at Stamford Bridge?
Why Hugo Ekitike could be a bad fit for Chelsea’s tactical ideology
Although Ektike – whose long-limbed frame and almost languid first touch makes him look quite a lot like Newcastle United’s Alexander Isak at first glance – has undeniably taken a significant step forward in Frankfurt following a disappointing spell with European champions PSG.
15 Bundesliga goals and seven more across European and cup competitions is a fine return, but the means by which he scored them is very different to the way in which either Delap or Nicolas Jackson, current incumbent in the central strikers role, go about their business.
Whereas Delap and Jackson are at their best playing off the shoulder of the last man and look to use raw speed to get in behind and work space through the centre, Ekitike has been at his best picking up the ball in slightly deeper or wider areas, looking to get into goal-scoring positions using his ability to beat defenders with the ball at his feet.
A recent video released by The Athletic makes the point that Ekitike has thrived in a counter-attacking system which gives him plenty of opportunities to ply wider areas – a very different system from that used by Chelsea under Maresca, which focuses on an aggressive high press, winning the ball in advanced areas, and which typically demanded that Jackson stick to narrower areas while the wingers attacked the spaces out wide.
In short, Chelsea play a very different style of football to that in operation at Frankfurt, and it’s reasonable to wonder whether Ekitike could adapt, especially as he isn’t at his strongest getting on the end of crosses, the regular provision of which forms a significant part of Chelsea’s attacking ideology.
For Ekitike to get into the positions he likes to work in for Frankfurt, he would have to work areas in which he could be treading on the toes of Chelsea’s wide-men or, perhaps more problematically, Cole Palmer.
Marecsa’s system at both Leicester City and at Stamford Bridge has demanded that his leading striker be rigid in their position, pinning the centre of the opposing defence back, getting on the end of crosses and creating space in behind and out wide for the rest of the attack to exploit. If the Italian head coach intends for Ekitike to carve out the same niche for himself, then it would certainly be asking him to play against type.
Of course, there’s another way of looking at it. Signing two strikers - one who fits the mould in Delap and another who doesn’t in Ekitike – allows Maresca to diversify his attacking options and break down teams who who are less vulnerable to speed and direct passes in attack, typically those who defend with a deeper line.
It’s debatable whether a striker like Ekitike would be the right point of difference to aim for, however. If Chelsea’s issues last year came in breaking down teams who play with deeper defensive lines, you’d expect their results to look very different – in the Premier League, they lost just two of their 20 matches against the ten teams with deepest average defensive lines, a 2-1 loss to Fulham in December and a 2-0 reversal against Ipswich just four days later.
As it is, it’s worth wondering whether Ektike would make a major contribution to solving the problems that Chelsea actually have. They’re already good against teams that drop deep, the usual issue for sides who play with striker like Delap and Jackson. The debate is whether the Frenchman, a player who is undeniably productive against higher defensive lines too, would help them to beat teams who push further up, where Chelsea have been less successful.
Perhaps the real debate, though, is why a team that play like Chelsea and who operate with a striker like Jackson struggle against higher defensive lines. That’s an interesting reversal of what you might expect to be the case. Normally, quick and direct attacking play would be effective against the sides that Chelsea tend to lose to. Would Ekitike change that dynamic?
Why signing Hugo Ekitike might be a good idea anyway
As we’ve seen over the past two years with Christopher Nkunku – a player that Maresca is likely to want offloaded over the course of the summer – signing a French forward with an impressive goal-scoring record in the Bundesliga that offers a different style of attacking play doesn’t always work. Then again, Ektike might just be so good that worrying too much about the precise details over the stylistic fit is an attempt to pick holes where none need to exist.
As well as being a prolific goalscorer, Ekitike had an exceptional all-round game. His movement off the ball is exceptional, his first touch hugely impressive and his capacity to beat a defender on the dribble and drive into open space better than all but a very few forwards in Europe.
He’s not just a goalscorer but also a creator, registering eight Bundesliga assists alongside his 15 league goals, and he generated 3.50 shooting opportunities per match for his team-mates, a very high mark for a number nine who is generally meant to be on the end of chances rather than teeing up those around him.
In short, just because he has thrived in a specific system for Frankfurt doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t succeed playing a different way, to the strictures of another system. The 22-year-old’s game has very few blind spots based on what we’ve seen over the past year. Some of the supporters who are cynical about his chances of success at Chelsea have also raised the red flag of his expected goals – his return of 15 in the German first division came from a total xG of 21.6, suggesting inefficient finishing.
The stats, as is often the case when discussing small sample sizes, don’t tell the full story. By the end of January, after he had scored a brace against Hoffenheim, Ekitike had bagged 11 from 11.9xG in the Bundesliga, meaning he had barely scored one goal less than might have been expected – and it’s only over the second half of the season, especially after he missed penalties against Holsten Kiel and Union Berlin, that the statistical gap grew.
Chelsea already have a penalty taker, so take the skewing effect of those missed spot-kicks and a couple of bad misses against Mainz and Freiburg during the last few weeks of the season out, and Ekitike looks much more like a perfectly acceptable finisher who also happens to be able to get into a huge number of dangerous positions. A bad conversion rate isn’t so terrible when you get into enough good areas to score plenty of goals anyway. For context, Ekitike ended the season with a higher xG than Harry Kane, and the England captain was getting better service from his team-mates.
All signs point to Ekitike being a very impressive player who can contribute in the long run, and one who will make the right team very happy indeed. Whether that’s Chesea is the real question – and while he has class and quality in abundance, it’s hard not to wonder whether the money that Ekitike might cost wouldn’t be better spent developing the squad in other areas, while trusting that the combination of Delap and Jackson up front will be enough to do the damage in attack.
This could be a signing which fails to fix the real issues should it get over the line. On the other hand, if Ekitike continues to progress as he has over the past 18 months, it’s a deal which would almost certainly bring goals with it, too.
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