Willian has now completed a trio of shock transfers with London sides after signing for Fulham this summer. The 34-year-old joins the Cottagers eight years after first signing for a Premier League side. Nearly a decade later and he has ticked off three clubs that no other player has played for before.
You are looking at a small enough list when finding Arsenal and Chelsea players to have worn both red and blue shirts. Add in fellow Londoners Fulham and Willian is at the centre of the Venn diagram all alone.
Whilst Petr Cech, Olivier Giroud, David Luiz and Ashley Cole - all players that played alongside Willian at Chelsea - all played for both the Blues and the Gunners, to then also play for Fulham is going a step further.
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The newly promoted side are neighbours for Chelsea and very few names have played for both clubs. Wayne Bridge and Clive Walker are on the list and Ray Wilkins once manager the Cottagers, but in terms of noteworthy names, that's about it.
The Brazilian, who scored 63 times in 339 matches over seven years with the club, has given Chelsea an answer to one of their longest standing issues, goalscoring. With Thomas Tuchel falling foul to a lack of consistent scorers and Kai Havertz being the only forward, with one, to score this season other than Raheem Sterling, Fulham's own forward has been compared to two of Chelsea's best scorers in recent times.
In an interview with The Athletic, Willian said: "Aleksandar [Mitrovic] is a very good player. He reminds me of Didier Drogba and Diego Costa. He is strong, he can hold the ball, can attack space and can score goals like them. We have an understanding already and are trying to build it even more. Every week and every game we play together, it will come."
The Serbian striker has hit the ground running this season after a record-breaking Championship campaign to get Fulham promoted. He already has six goals in the league, double his total for the season in 2020/21 where he struggled in a relegated team.
Having dominated the second division last term, 43 goals and seven assists in 44 matches, also scoring 26 in 2019/20, Mitrovic is playing his best football to date and has taken to the league easily third time round.
As a promising player at Anderlecht who was snapped up by Newcastle, Chelsea have had previous interest in the striker. At 28 and in the form of his life, maybe recreating the efforts of Drogba and Costa is a route that Graham Potter will look to in the future at Chelsea.
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