Top 5 Worst Chelsea Strikers Who Flopped In The Premier League Era
The term “Chelsea striker” is unfortunately synonymous with disappointment and failure at this point – the Blues have had their fair share of centre forward flops.
For this list, we aren’t looking at players who merely underwhelmed, such as Alvaro Morata or Romelu Lukaku. We’re looking at complete flops – players who won’t look back on their time at Chelsea with any sort of fondness or pride.
They may have succeeded elsewhere – just because they’re on this list (which is in no particular order), it doesn’t mean they had terrible careers.
All they need to have done to qualify for inclusion is to have had a woeful stint at Stamford Bridge.
Fernando Torres
Hot on the heels of a brilliant spell at Liverpool, Fernando Torres looked set to light up the Premier League once again at Chelsea. As we know, it didn’t quite pan out like that.
Torres’ goal scoring touch seemed to have vanished by the time he arrived in London. He missed a number of great chances, including a particularly embarrassing open goal against Manchester United.
When Torres left Chelsea, he had scored a meager 20 Premier League goals in 110 games. He did, however, score a crucial goal against Barcelona in a Champions League semi final that Blues fans will remember forever – so there’s that, at least.
The Spaniard’s time at Chelsea was not without the occasional bright moment – you cannot say the same for most of the other strikers on this list.
Andriy Shevchenko
Another player who was brought in amongst pomp and circumstance, Andriy Shevchenko had previously lit up the Serie A at AC Milan. At Chelsea? Not quite.
Not only did Shevchenko fail to score many goals, his inclusion also disrupted the system that Jose Mourinho had been perfecting at Chelsea.
Mourinho was forced into dropping a player merely to accommodate his new star player, who underperformed regardless of who was playing around him.
It wasn’t all Shevchenko’s fault, of course. He had injury problems at the Blues, including a hernia operation that saw him miss a huge chunk of the 2006/07 season.
Radamel Falcao
Really, Chelsea should have known better with this one. Radamel Falcao was coming off a very poor stint at Manchester United – moving to Chelsea did nothing for his confidence.
Arguably, he performed even worse for the Blues than he did for United. When the dust had settled, Falcao scored just one goal in ten Premier League games for Chelsea.
A legendary striker in his own right, Falcao has been excellent pretty much everywhere he’s been – except the Premier League.
Thankfully, he was only on loan at Chelsea, so the Blues didn’t need to move him off their books.
Gonzalo Higuain
Gonzalo Higuain was excellent for a number of massive clubs before his ill-fated Chelsea move. He’d succeeded at Real Madrid, Napoli and Juventus – you know where this is going.
He fared slightly better than the previous loan striker on this list, Falcao, but only just. In total, Higuain scored five goals in 19 games for the Blues.
Higuain struggled in big games for Chelsea. His goals for the club came against Huddersfield, Fulham, Burnley and Watford – when playing stronger sides, the Argentinian was often very ineffective.
Chris Sutton
Younger Chelsea fans may not remember the abject disaster that was Chris Sutton at Stamford Bridge – rest assured, we do.
Following an excellent spell at Blackburn Rovers alongside Alan Shearer, Chelsea really signed the wrong part of the famous S&S connection. Across 28 Premier League games, Sutton scored a pitiful solitary goal.
Following his Chelsea plight, Sutton signed for Celtic and scored 63 goals in 130 games for the Bhoys. He wasn’t a bad player by any means – but still, he remains one of Chelsea’s worst strikers of all time.