MOHAMED SALAH’s dismissal from Chelsea and Jose Mourinho has been a dark shadow looming over the club for almost a decade now.
Ever since his departure from Stamford Bridge in 2016, Salah, 33, has fired Liverpool to two Premier League titles as well as Champions League glory – picking up numerous individual awards in the process.
Meanwhile, the Blues’ fans have watched the likes of Willian, Juan Cuadrado and Hakim Ziyech take up the Egypt international’s role at Stamford Bridge with mixed results.
Thankfully at least, Chelsea learnt from their mistakes and haven’t been truly bitten in the same manner for a while now.
However, that might be about to change by selling what seems to be the most obvious Salah replica the club have had in years.
Noni Madueke moving to Arsenal has split the Chelsea fanbase down the middle.
On one hand, £50million represents great value for a player with seven goals and three assists in the Premier League last season, with three goals coming in one standout performance against Wolves.
But on the other, it signals the sale of a player who perhaps epitomises BlueCo’s model better than any other.
Madueke, 23, is a talented youngster who is an England international, on an increasingly upward trajectory being sold for an amount that could quite easily double in the next 12 months.
Not to mention, his replacement is an 18-year-old Brazilian wonderkid who is a talented but still relatively unknown outside of South America in Estevao Willian.
Unlike Salah, who was cited as not being “patient enough” by Mourinho, Madueke has been given significant chances in the first team and looked ready to explode as a touchline winger under Enzo Maresca next year.
His numbers last year may not be blowing anyone away, but it’s important to remember he had Nicolas Jackson on the end of many chances he was creating.
And Jackson has proven he can be wasteful at the best of times.
With Liam Delap and Joao Pedro already looking clinical in the Club World Cup, Chelsea’s frontline next season could have represented an opportunity for Madueke to explode into the player most fans know he can become.
As for Arsenal, it baffles the mind to see an online petition of #NoToMadueke trending this week with over 2,000 signatures at the time of writing.
The ex-PSV Eindhoven ace represents the kind of strength in depth the Gunners were crying out for when Bukayo Saka got injured last season.
The only saving grace for Chelsea might be that Madueke has chosen a destination that he still may not be given the chance to shine week-in-week-out with Saka ahead of him.
Had he gone to Newcastle or back to Tottenham, where he was once an academy player, fans at Stamford Bridge might feel a lot stronger about him really proving himself as an elite Premier League winger as Salah did before him.
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