Blue Meanie achieves the impossible by going one further than Jose Mourinho.
After Didier Drogba destroyed Watford with a hat-trick, Mourinho quite rightly noted that “at this moment I don’t see a striker in Europe playing like him.†and after he fired home the winner against Sweden it made me realized that at this moment I’d go one further and argue that on current form Drogba is the best striker in the world.
A confident Drogba seems more or less unstoppable. Whether it’s magnificent strikes like the winner at home to Barcelona, or calmly taken important last minute goals like the last gasp equalizer away to Barcelona, or poachers goals like his first against Watford, Drogba’s the man right now. He was so good last Saturday he even got Andri Shevchenko on the scoresheet, playing him in with a perfectly – and I do mean perfectly – weighted pass. And all that praise for his goalscoring without mentioning he’s currently the world’s best battering ram, play-holding, never-give-up, line-leading striker that does for the Chelsea attack what Claude Makelele does for the defense.
Not so long ago, the big Ivorian was being unfavourably compared to Premiership joker Ade Akinbiyi or Wigan’s Emile Heskey and was in a world of trouble for diving, but 2006/7 looks like being his season. Two hat-tricks by November, top scorer in the Prem, top scorer in the Champions League, and massively overshadowing the man many thought to be his £30 million pound replacement – Drogba is the poster boy for giving foreign imports time to settle.
Right now I wouldn’t swap him for Arsenal’s Thierry Henry, and I’ll bet most Chelsea fans will feel exactly the same.