Former Premier League striker Troy Deeney has said that Chelsea signing Joao Pedro wants to become the ‘new R9’. 

Chelsea signed Pedro for £60m from Brighton last week, and the striker has already scored his first goal for the Blues. He scored twice against his boyhood club Fluminense in the Club World Cup, to book the Blues a spot in the final.

It comes after a season where Pedro netted 10 goals and provided seven assists for Brighton, and he will now hope to continue his development under Enzo Maresca at Chelsea. Before his time at Brighton, Pedro played for Watford, where he scored 24 goals in three years.

Troy Deeney was one of his teammates during his time at Vicarage Road, and he has predicted great things for Pedro since he move to Chelsea. Deeney said on talkSPORT: “He is all or nothing Joao, he’s an exceptional football player.

“He’s passionate, he’s energetic, he wants to win, he wants to play every minute of every game. I think at Chelsea, you’re going to see the real Joao Pedro, which is one that enjoys competition, one that believes he should be starting for Brazil, and one that wants to show ‘here’s who I am’.

“I’ve seen this player since he was 18 years-old, and the mentality has not changed. It’s always been, ‘I want to be the best, I want to play for my national team, I want to be the new R9.”

How could Pedro do in his first season at Chelsea?

We decided to ask Chat GPT to predict how well Pedro will do in his first year as a Chelsea player, and the results are very impressive.

With the assumption that Pedro will play both as a striker, and an inside forward out wide, AI predicted that the 23-year-old would score 23 goals in all competitions. (14 in the Premier League, two in the FA Cup, one in the Carabao Cup and six in the Champions League).

It also predicted that he will record 10 assists across the season, in a total of 3376 minutes played, which equates to around 37 or 38 matches. Furthermore, AI predicted that Pedro would win Chelsea’s Young Player of the Season, and feature in the Champions League Team of the Season.