Mauricio Pochettino is getting down to work at Chelsea and has now had his first day as manager at the club's training base. As he attended Cobham as head coach, stepping out of an early morning taxi in his slick black attire, suited and booted himself for media work and getting settled in Surrey, a new era had started.
The Argentine spoke well in his first appearance in front of the cameras and has impressed fans that may have been either uncertain of his appointment or sceptical of the club's direction. Having been rudderless for too long, he is a flagship appointment for New Chelsea.
What he will miss, even when his team arrive for pre-season training in the coming week, is a reliable source of goals. In his squad the top scorer for Chelsea is very possibly going to be Reece James. From right-back he has 11 goals. Even though James is one of the best players in his position in the world, it is a staggering feat of attacking incompetence that has lead to this point.
Mason Mount is all-but-out of the door and was a primary avenue of attacking output for the past three years. Romelu Lukaku is likely to be sold or loaned once more with the chances of a permanent stay at Stamford Bridge unlikely. Callum Hudson-Odoi is the next top scorer and he is also set to leave with just one year on his contract.
Nicolas Jackson has come in for £30 million ($38m) from Villarreal but has just one season of senior football under his belt. Promising, though he is, it would be a big ask for him to lead the line prolificaly at 22 in his debut year. Pochettino, then, is looking for his answer to winning games.
At Paris Saint-Germain he had a selection of strikers to choose from, all of them would get close to a modern day great XI. Tottenham had their own modern day great in Harry Kane, even Southampton flourished with Rickie Lambert.
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Chelsea, like many, have been keeping tabs on Napoli striker Victor Osimhen for years. He is one of the most-sought after players in his position across the globe. Since his days at Lille he has been one to be looked at and admired. He is the perfect signing for someone like Napoli, though. A team and a league in-which he can score ten league goals without being lambasted.
In his second full season he scored 14 with five assists. Going off minutes-per-goal it was still a strong season. Then again, when Chelsea dipped into the market in 2021 for a gun-slinging signing to back-up their Champions League success under Thomas Tuchel, they didn't get past the second name on the scoring charts in Italy that season.
Instead of going down beyond aged names of Zlatan Ibrahimovic or the failed Alvaro Morata, midfielder Franck Kessie had more than Osimhen and he was no doubt not even in the same postcode of thought as the players Chelsea had in mind. This is understandable, really. He had just moved from Lille and was less than 12 months into his time in Naples.
However, in hindsight, the better deal may well have not been to spend £97.5m ($123.8m) on a player committed entirely to Inter. At the time it was the logical call, it didn't take long to realise that logic had been replaced by emotion. There would have been few calling Chelsea's name in response to potential league favourities for 2021/22 had they signed Osimhen and not Lukaku.
Two years on and nobody has scored more than 11 league goals in a single season for Chelsea. Osimhen has 40 in the same time period, 14 in one year and 26 the next. Midfielders have finished as the club's top scorer in three of the past four years at SW6.
Since Tammy Abraham, nobody has more than 15 goals in a single league campaign, that was in 2019 and it was his first year as a senior player at the club. Diego Costa is the last player to get 20 or more, that was in 2017. Osimhen could hardly have done worse.
There is the point to make, and a fair one too, that Osimhen may not have developed at the same rapid rate. The 23-year-old went from being a talented and rated somebody but largely nobody to most football watchers to being the cream of the crop in terms of attackers within effectively 24 months.
In the same period Chelsea have tried and tested many forwards with almost no trace of success. How Osimhen would have fared in a dysfunctional and entirely incohesive unit may well have stunted his growth and Napoli may well have been back in for him at a cut-price. We've seen that before.
Chelsea are showing signs of changing, though, and Nicolas Jackson is evidence of it. Whereas the chances of getting Osimhen for below £100m ($127m) are looking unlikely, he has a reported and estimated value of between £103m ($130.8m) and £120million ($152.4m), Jackson was a snip of the price.
He may well be far from the complete player and incomparable at this time, but when looking at the price of players across time, Chelsea have had more success with under the radar signings. Olivier Giroud was a major success for just £15m ($19m) and rarely have they come as loyal as him.
According to Transfermarkt Osimhen is now in the top six most valuable players in the world. Having signed for a massive £64.4m ($81.8m) from Lille it was quite the fee for a player estimated as being worth nearly half that. Now he is worth nearly double. Napoli hit the jackpot.
Despite uncertainty, he has also remained firm in his stance at Napoli. "I have never seen a city crazier about football like the way the Neapolitans are," he told SoccerNet. "They show all their players love. And wherever I go to, I am being respected. Kids love me, a lot of people admire me, they idolize me by putting on the replica of my mask.
"It shows the hard work I have given to them and what I mean to them. And for me, there’s no better place to be than this place.
"I am so happy I made the right choice by coming here. And achieving this kind of greatness with the Neapolitans is something that I will wake up and always smile about.
"My children’s children will come into this world and realize that their father has done something amazing."
Osimhen had been thought to be angling for a move away after Luciano Spalletti left the club but his words indicate a different story. The challenge of now getting him away seems to have become a much tougher one.
Chelsea, who are among the clubs interested in making him one of the most expensive players of all time with an offer, would be left to rue not gettung him earlier. When moving to Wolsburg as a teenager he was allowed to go for just £3m ($3.7m) and Liverpool's new sporting director Jorg Schmadtke will be having nightmares over sanctioning the deal.
“It wasn’t a good move, in hindsight,” Schmadtke he says of the transfer. “When I came, he was limping and running in circles. I was told that the strikers we had weren’t good enough. The most important lesson is that you have to be patient with some transfers.”
For Chelsea, they need to be more patient and trusting with those at a young level. The same will be true of Jackson, who's end-of-season burst saw him score nine times in eight games with two assists. Before that, in June 2022, he was estimated to be worth just £850,000 ($1.1m).
Trust will now be a key part of the success of Jackson over a long-term contract. Whether they can partner him with Osimhen or not, the lessons have been learnt and the figures tell the whole story.
