Chelsea’s No.9 Hunt: Missed Targets and Future Challenges

For months, everything at Chelsea pointed towards one solution: Khadija Shaw.

Sonia Bompastor’s first major rebuild piece was supposed to be the Manchester City striker, the ruthless finisher who had just fired City to a first Women’s Super League title in a decade and completed a league-and-cup double. Her contract ticking down, the noise around a move to west London grew so loud it felt inevitable.

Then, in one statement, it vanished.

Fresh from her title-clinching heroics, Shaw shut the door and committed her future to City, ripping up Chelsea’s first blueprint for a new-look attack. The striker they had quietly built a plan around was staying put.

Chelsea’s search moved on. The setbacks kept coming.

From Shaw to Schroder to Salma: Three Swings, Three Misses

If Shaw was the proven, ready-made superstar, Felicia Schroder was the thrilling gamble.

The 19-year-old tore through the Swedish Damallsvenskan last season, scoring 30 goals and supplying nine assists as Hacken took the title. Then she topped the scoring charts again to drag them to the inaugural Europa Cup crown in May. A teenager with those numbers doesn’t just get noticed; she becomes a bidding war.

Chelsea pushed hard. Hard enough to launch a world-record offer for the striker last month.

It still wasn’t enough.

Real Madrid moved quicker, closed the deal and unveiled Schroder last week. For the second time in one window, Chelsea watched a potential long-term solution slip away.

Then came Salma Paralluelo.

The Barcelona forward, who scored twice in last month’s Champions League final, is the kind of player clubs build eras around. At 22, she’s already one of Europe’s most coveted attackers, able to play through the middle or wide, devastating on her day, still searching for week-to-week consistency.

Chelsea tried again.

According to The Athletic, they put an offer on the table earlier this month. Paralluelo turned it down. The proposal didn’t meet her wage demands, believed to be north of £1 million a year. Arsenal, Lyon, Paris Saint-Germain and the cash-fuelled project at London City are all in the queue. One of them will get her. It will not be Chelsea.

Three elite targets. Three rejections.

A Brutal Truth: Chelsea Didn’t Score Enough

The urgency behind this chase is no mystery.

Chelsea’s attack misfired last season. The numbers are stark. Their 44 league goals marked their lowest WSL return since 2018-19, the last time they also failed to win the title. Expected goals data painted the same picture: only Leicester City, West Ham and newly-promoted London City Lionesses underperformed their xG by a greater margin.

Shot conversion? Third-worst in the division, again only Leicester and West Ham faring worse.

There were reasons, and they weren’t trivial. Sam Kerr returned from a 20‑month injury lay-off at the start of the campaign and needed time to rediscover rhythm. Mayra Ramirez missed the entire season with a hamstring problem. Aggie Beever-Jones and Catarina Macario also picked up knocks. At times, Bompastor had to push Lauren James or Alyssa Thompson into an unfamiliar centre-forward role just to keep the structure intact.

Still, the conclusion was unavoidable: Chelsea needed a No.9. A real one. A focal point.

January came and went without a major move in that area. The summer was supposed to fix it. Shaw was the dream. Schroder was the high-ceiling alternative. Paralluelo was the hybrid option, part winger, part striker, part superstar-in-waiting.

All gone.

Where Do Chelsea Turn Now?

Paralluelo’s refusal hasn’t just closed one door; it has exposed how small the room really is. The list of elite, available centre-forwards is painfully short.

One name keeps circling back into the conversation: Marie-Antoinette Katoto.

The France international walked away from PSG last summer after an acrimonious split, leaving as the club’s all-time leading scorer with 180 goals in 223 games. She chose Lyon, signed a four-year contract and, on paper, joined the most fearsome attacking stable in Europe.

On the pitch, the first year never really ignited.

Katoto scored six league goals and one in the Champions League. Starts were limited, particularly in Europe, where Ada Hegerberg provided heavyweight competition for the No.9 role. It was an adjustment season under Jonatan Giraldez, a new style, a new environment.

There is nothing concrete to suggest Lyon are ready to sell. Nor is one quieter campaign enough to tarnish her reputation as one of the game’s most reliable finishers. But if Chelsea want a top-level striker whose situation is not entirely settled, Katoto is one of the very few who fits that description.

Beyond her, the options thin out quickly.

Barbra Banda, at Orlando Pride, has only a year left on her NWSL deal. That alone will alert Europe’s elite. Her power, movement and scoring record make her an obvious candidate for any club searching for a game-changer. Yet prising her out of Florida would demand a monumental offer, financially and in terms of project.

Temwa Chawinga? Forget it for now. Kansas City Current have just tied the NWSL MVP and back-to-back Golden Boot winner to a new three-year contract. She’s the face of that franchise. She isn’t moving cheaply, if at all.

Romee Leuchter and the Next Tier

So Chelsea may have to think slightly differently. Not down, necessarily, but sideways.

Romee Leuchter is the standout in that second tier. PSG signed her in the summer of 2024 as the understudy, the striker who would learn in Katoto’s shadow. She did that for a year, then stepped into the spotlight when Katoto left.

She didn’t blink.

Leuchter finished as top scorer in the French top flight last season, hitting 18 goals in just 17 starts. Clinical, clever, 25 years old and entering the final year of her contract, she will be on every major club’s scouting list. She is not quite in the established super-elite yet, but all the signs point in that direction.

This is the kind of profile Chelsea may have to lean into: players on the cusp, rather than those already at the summit.

The other route is the one they tried to take with Schroder: find the next phenomenon before she becomes unattainable.

That’s the problem. Players like Schroder barely exist.

The Young Guns: Agyemang and the Almost-Impossibles

Among the very few who fit that mould is Michelle Agyemang.

The 20-year-old England international belongs to Arsenal, one of Chelsea’s fiercest rivals. She is still working her way back from an ACL injury, but her performances at Euro 2025 told their own story. On the biggest stage, under the brightest pressure, she delivered, helping the Lionesses defend their crown.

The pathway at Arsenal, though, is brutally congested. Alessia Russo and Stina Blackstenius are already in place. Selina Cerci is expected to arrive and add yet another layer of competition in the centre-forward department.

On paper, that creates an opportunity. In reality, it is exactly the kind of transfer that rarely happens. Arsenal selling a blue-chip young striker to Chelsea? Almost unthinkable. Yet any club with serious long-term planning would be tracking her situation closely, this summer and beyond.

There are other talented young forwards across Europe and the NWSL, but most are far less proven. For a club that expects to challenge for every trophy immediately, gambling on a raw prospect to fix last season’s scoring crisis is a risk of the highest order.

What Chelsea Still Have – and What They Don’t

This is not a scorched-earth situation. Chelsea are not starting from zero up front.

Ramirez, heavily linked with Real Madrid by ESPN earlier this year, remains at the club. Schroder’s move to Spain may well cool Madrid’s interest in the Colombia international. Her last full season in blue, 2024-25, showed exactly what she can offer: physical dominance, relentless running, a constant threat in behind. A serious hamstring injury wiped out last term, but she returned to play twice for her country in early June. That matters. Bompastor will cling to that as a sign she can be ready to lead the line in 2026-27.

Beever-Jones is also expected to stay, even with her contract technically expiring this summer and no renewal yet announced. James and Thompson can both operate through the middle if required. On paper, that’s depth.

Last season exposed how fragile that illusion can be.

One or two injuries and the entire structure buckled, the goal output dropped and Chelsea’s title streak ended. For a team with their ambitions, “we’ve got enough bodies” is not a strategy. It’s a warning.

They need a striker who changes games, not just a name to fill the squad list.

If Chelsea are serious about reclaiming the WSL and reasserting themselves in Europe, this summer has to deliver that player. The market is tight, the obvious targets have slipped away, and the clock is already ticking.

The question now is not whether they can find a striker.

It’s whether they can find one good enough.