Chelsea are reportedly well in the race to sign Napoli forward Edinson Cavani but with an asking price as high as his there is always room for complications and Jose Mourinho may have to consider other options, so it’s no surprise that we’re being linked with Mario Gomez again.
Cavani’s release clause exceeds €60 million and there are serious doubts that any one of Chelsea, Real Madrid, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain will meet it. At the same time Napoli are sticking to their guns and the only way they will budge is if a player that is desirable to them is often in exchange, despite preferring the cash option.
There has already been rumours that Real are willing to offer a couple of players whilst City may use Edin Dzeko and Chelsea make Fernando Torres available in a cash plus player deal, but any side will still have to pay a significant sum additionally to land the Uruguayan.
Italian journalist Tancredi Palmeri claims that Chelsea have contacted Gomez:
Chelsea have contacted Mario Gomez
— Tancredi Palmeri (@tancredipalmeri) June 9, 2013
What does it mean that Chelsea contacted Gomes? One of possible answers, so far all equally likely:
— Tancredi Palmeri (@tancredipalmeri) June 9, 2013
a)Chelsea might want to sign Gomez;b)Chelsea might want put pressure on Napoli,which want to replace Cavani with Gomez;
— Tancredi Palmeri (@tancredipalmeri) June 9, 2013
c)Chelsea might use Gomez to swap for Cavani,as City got an asset like Dzeko that Chelsea have not;d)Chelsea check simply Gomez availability
— Tancredi Palmeri (@tancredipalmeri) June 9, 2013
Now, a player cannot move more than once during one transfer window unless it’s on a loan, so the theory that Chelsea may buy Gomez and offer him in some sort of swap seems awfully convoluted and I’d guess it’s highly unlikely.
If Chelsea do have an interest in Gomez then it’s for his own qualities and considering his record he has to be considered as an alternative to Cavani.
Any time he’s linked with us I’m often left a little surprised by how many people give a negative review of him. Many bring up his age as for some reason there’s a lot of people out there that wrongly believe him to be over 30…he’s 27. It’s also a common misconception that he fell out of favour at Bayern Munich because he wasn’t good enough, but in truth he was unfortunate to suffer an injury and Mario Mandzukic couldn’t stop scoring which prevented him from winning his place back.
Okay, he hasn’t got the best ability as an all-round football but who cares? He’s a forward and scoring goals is his job and something he has done at the highest level. Despite having only nine starts in 21 league appearances he scored 11 goals in the Bundesliga. He was also consistent in the Champions League with two goals and two assists in two starts over seven games in total. Gomez netted a few in the cup as well and 19 goals is a significant total when you’ve made mainly subs appearances in 32 matches…it took Torres 64 appearances to manage 22 and most of those were from the starting line-up.
It’s been reported that he could leave Bayern Munich on the cheap, so will probably go for quite a bit less than £20m. I would be happy to have either him or Cavani, but think the German definitely represents better value for money and has been a consistent scorer at a higher level than the Napoli forward. There’s also a much better chance of a fair rotation between Gomez and Romelu Lukaku than there would be with Cavani around.
You could probably buy Gomez and Hulk/Isco for less than it would take to buy one Cavani. Something to think about.
Source: @tancredipalmeri
If we sign gomez it would be better business than signing a superstar like cavani who would take all the game time off the youngsters . Piazon ,ismaail , lukkaku , baker .