The player who should be top of Jose Mourinho’s Stamford Bridge striker wish-list.
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Bayern Munich have more or less admitted they are ready to allow German forward Mario Gomez to leave the Allianz Arena and having seen front-runners Fiorentina scared off by a perfectly reasonable price-tag one would imagine Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho would be considering making an offer for the prolific goal-scorer.
ESPN claim that the Bavarian side are willing to accept offers of around €20m (£17m) for the 27 year old, a fee that is perhaps a third of what Napoli are demanding for long term Blues target Edinson Cavani and a third of what Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich shelled out for Fernando Torres, and therefore surely a bargain that the West London side can not pass up.
Former Bayern boss Jupp Heyneckes felt duty bound to bring in an alternative striking option last summer when Gomez was ruled out of the start of the season with an ankle injury that required surgery after the Euro 2012 finals and Mario Mandzukic was certainly not found wanting but the lack of first team time handed back to the former Stuttgart man was perhaps harsh given his previous efforts for the club.
In his first season at Bayern Munich Gomez managed a modest return of 14 goals from 45 appearances in all competitions, a season that saw Louis Van Gaal secure a Bundesliga triumph.
The following two campaigns saw powerful forward Gomez go into overdrive.
In 2010/11 and 2011/12 the German forward scored at an astonishing rate, netting 79 goals in 95 appearances and perhaps most impressively finished as runner-up to Lionel Messi as the top Champions League scorer in both campaigns.
Even during last term’s injury and bench ravaged campaign Gomez could simply not stop scoring, as evidenced by the infographic below (courtesy of WhoScored.com)
It’s no secret that Mourinho is longing to bring in a proven finisher to lead his Blues attack and has been linked with a host of possible targets but none of the likes of Edinson Cavani, Hulk, Stevan Jovetic, Wayne Rooney and Luis Suarez can claim to be as effective as Gomez has been over the past few seasons.
Gomez has been consistency personified scoring a massive 192 goals over the past seven seasons and arguably the Bayern Munich man has the physical stature and presence in the box to be a huge success in the English top tier.
With Fernando Torres and Demba Ba seemingly not being players Mourinho is looking to stick ‘up top’ it may well be worth the former Real Madrid manager’s while to make an offer for Gomez, it could just be the signing that brings the Stamford Bridge side a step nearer to securing the Premier League title.