Beefing up the attack has been Chelsea’s primary focus of a typically active summer transfer window. At the Club World Cup, it was hard not to conclude they had succeeded.

Liam Delap made an immediate impact in the group stage in the United States. Then, mid-tournament acquisition Joao Pedro was sensational in the knockout rounds, scoring twice against former club Fluminense in the semi-final and once more in Chelsea’s 3-0 victory over Paris Saint-Germain in the final.

Nicolas Jackson, who barely featured in the tournament after picking up a ludicrous straight red card against Flamengo, was not missed. Now he may be sold if a suitable offer arrives, with Joao Pedro and Delap trusted to lead Chelsea’s attack. Supporting them from the flanks could be Pedro Neto, or fellow new faces Jamie Gittens and Estevao.

By next month, head coach Enzo Maresca could also have Alejandro Garnacho and perhaps even Xavi Simons available to him, offsetting the expected departure of Christopher Nkunku. Factoring in the lucrative sale of Noni Madueke to Arsenal, this summer may come to represent an almost total refresh of the attacking options around talisman Cole Palmer.

Estevao adds to Chelsea’s forwards this season (Robin Jones/Getty Images)

How all these new pieces fit together will provide the most interesting Chelsea subplot of the early weeks and months of the new season.

Crystal Palace offered an opening weekend reminder at Stamford Bridge that any shiny collection of attacking talent can be shut down by a good opponent with a well-conceived and well-executed game plan.

Broadening out to look at the bigger picture, do Chelsea have an attack that can one day win them the Premier League title again? That is not the expectation this season but rest assured, it is a target in the coming years.

The question has hung over Chelsea’s squad building pretty much ever since they last lifted the trophy in 2016-17, and the answer has invariably been no, despite a ludicrously long list of high-profile attackers arriving at Stamford Bridge over the past eight years: Alvaro Morata, Olivier Giroud, Christian Pulisic, Gonzalo Higuain, Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech, Romelu Lukaku, Raheem Sterling, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Joao Felix (twice), Mykhailo Mudryk, Madueke, Jackson, Palmer, Nkunku, Neto, and Jadon Sancho.

Fans will be hoping that this summer’s signings can succeed where many others have failed, but here is a startling fact: since Diego Costa left Stamford Bridge in 2017, the only Chelsea player to score at least 15 goals from open play in a single Premier League season is Tammy Abraham (2019-20), a Cobham academy graduate who cost the club nothing to acquire.

Jackson and Palmer are the two players who have come closest (scoring 14 and 13 open-play goals in the league in 2023-24). It is a relatively crude and basic measure of readiness to be champions, but nine of the last 10 Premier League title-winning teams featured at least one player who netted 15 or more times from open play.

Abraham, the last Chelsea player to score 15 open-play league goals in a season, came through the academy (Ian Kington/IKIMAGES/AFP via Getty Images)

The only exception to this rule is the 2020-21 season when Manchester City’s attack pushed the boundaries of Pep Guardiola’s egalitarian ideals. Ilkay Gundogan was the team’s leading scorer in the Premier League with 12 open-play goals, followed closely by Sterling (10), Riyad Mahrez, Phil Foden and Gabriel Jesus (all nine).

Maresca got a close look at this particular team while coaching City’s elite development squad to the Premier League 2 title in the 2020-21 season. Perhaps that goes some way to explaining his quote from a Club World Cup press conference in July: “I prefer to have four or five players scoring 10 or 12 goals each than one player scoring 40 goals.”

It is worth noting, however, that Guardiola himself has moved away from this particular idea in recent years. Most teams that win the Premier League can boast a prolific individual scorer, whether it is an overwhelming No 9, such as Erling Haaland at City, or an irrepressible winger, such as Mohamed Salah at Liverpool. Does that player exist at Chelsea, either in their current form or in theory?

Joao Pedro gave a very good impression of being an elite scorer at the Club World Cup, but that has not been the story of his career.

His best return for open-play league goals in a season is 10, in the Championship with Watford in 2022-23. None of his previous clubs regarded him as a pure No 9 and Chelsea expect the 23-year-old to operate across their attacking line. He may explode as a goalscorer in his mid-twenties, or he may blossom into the type of forward Roberto Firmino was for Liverpool: versatile, skilful and an ideal complement to attacking team-mates who shoulder more of the scoring burden.

Joao Pedro has rarely been considered an out-and-out goalscorer (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Delap scored 23 open-play goals in 20 games under Maresca in Premier League 2 for Manchester City’s under-21s in 2020-21 and was hugely impressive in netting 10 open-play goals at the tip of a limited Ipswich Town side last season, but that is his best return at senior level. With better team-mates and service, he can beat that mark for Chelsea sooner rather than later.

Reaching the rarefied air of Haaland and Salah’s scoring prowess would require a much bigger leap.

Palmer has 24 open-play goals for Chelsea in two Premier League seasons. There is ample evidence that he is an exceptionally cool finisher, but he has too much playmaking responsibility in Maresca’s team to be reasonably expected to also be the top scorer at Stamford Bridge.

Neto is 25, the same age Salah was when he signed for Liverpool, and played some of the best football of his career at the Club World Cup. A big uptick in his scoring output is not impossible, but it is worth remembering that Salah scored 29 goals from open play across two Serie A seasons for Roma before moving to Anfield. Neto’s best return in a league season is five.

Estevao scored 13 goals (three of which were penalties) in a league season for Palmeiras before his 18th birthday, and has the clearest superstar potential of any Chelsea attacker besides Palmer. Gittens netted eight times in the Bundesliga for Borussia Dortmund last season. Garnacho’s scoring numbers are less impressive than his best flashes for Manchester United would suggest. Simons appears to have a real eye for goal, but he is fundamentally an attacking midfielder rather than a forward.

Gittens evades Crystal Palace’s Daniel Munoz (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

The youth of all of the above makes firm projections of the future difficult. Perhaps one of them emerges as the prolific goalscorer that a Premier League title-winning Chelsea team likely needs, or perhaps Maresca can create a collective alchemy that recaptures the peculiar magic of that City team in 2020-21.

Even that would be a break from much of recent history at Stamford Bridge. In the eight seasons since they last won the Premier League title, Chelsea have had the seventh-best attack in the division, scoring a little more than 63 goals on average. Maresca’s side found the net 64 times in 38 games last season, one of the few areas that saw significant regression from Mauricio Pochettino’s sole campaign in charge (which yielded 77 goals scored).

Maresca is not lacking in attacking reinforcements to improve that tally, and may get one or two more before the transfer deadline. How they try to get there will be fascinating to watch, but Chelsea must find a way to become the sum of their spending in the final third if the champions of the world are to become champions of England again.

(Top photo: Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)