Chelsea has agreed on a deal in principle to sign Timo Werner from as per media outlets in Germany & England. The Germany international striker has a €55m (£49.4m) release clause which expires on Monday, June 15. Chelsea has offered a £200,000-a-week contract to Werner, who also interested Liverpool and Manchester United.
He had publicly indicated his preference to move to Premier League leaders Liverpool but they were unwilling to pay the release clause in the current climate. That allowed Chelsea to move in for their number one forward target, and the 24-year-old is happy to play for Frank Lampard’s side. His priority has always been to sign for a Champions League club where he can play regularly. Werner is set to join Hakim Ziyech, who is joining from Ajax for £33m on July 1, as new additions at Stamford Bridge this summer following their transfer ban being lifted by FIFA in December last year. The club is also interested in bringing in a new left-back, with Leicester’s Ben Chilwell their number one target.
In the top-five European leagues, the following are the top-10 shot takers this season – Cristiano Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowksi, Timo Werner, Lionel Messi, Mohamed Salah, Raul Jimenez, Edin Dzeko, Karim Benzema, Ciro Immobile and Kylian Mbappe. Five of them – Lewandowski, Immobile, Werner, Ronaldo and Messi – are also the top five goalscorers, but all of them rank in the top 30 marksmen. Chelsea’s principal transfer target Werner ranks third for total shots so far this season with 103. He is also third for goals with 25, four behind the historic pace set by Bayern Munich marksman Lewandowski. He is 15th in the top-five leagues for shots per 90 minutes with 3.88, and eighth with 1.88 for shots on target. He also ranks 25th for the percentage of shots on target with 50.5%. Werner has also had a prolific year for goals, the best of his career by some distance. His expected goals, goals, shots, shots on target, non-penalty expected goals and shot-on-target percentage are all at career-high levels. And some of the figures have jumped massively from his recent seasons. To bundle his sensational performances into one simple number, the RB Leipzig striker averages 0.37 more goals per 90 minutes this season than last. Then we have Chelsea, who have struggled to produce consistent, high-level play in the position all season long. Blues boss Frank Lampard has largely used Tammy Abraham as his centre-forward. The youngster’s 13 goals are encouraging for his first season as a leading man at the club, but he has scored just twice in his last 11 matches. He has also gone missing for large periods of the season – of those 13 goals, seven came in one three-game stretch early in the season. Then there is Olivier Giroud. In all competitions, the Frenchman has three goals in 684 minutes this season. He turns 34 in September, and while he will remain with Chelsea for another year, he is hardly a reliable starting option.
The German goal-scoring machine will turn Lampard’s blues into a potent attacking unit. Chelsea fans will be hoping a lot of goals. The fans have been ecstatic since the news broke out & they have even coined a term saying it is “Timo Time”. Will he be a hit or a miss at Stamford Bridge? Only time will tell.
