From Bobby Tambling in the 1960s to Tammy Abraham now, Chelsea has a long and proud history of having some of the best strikers in the English Premier League.
In this article, we’ll be looking at the cream of the crop when it comes to the Blue’s frontmen.
Bobby Tambling
It might be a little hard to believe, given the striking talent that has played for Chelsea in recent years, but Bobby Tambling still holds the record as the club’s all-time highest goal scorer.
Tambling started his time with Chelsea in 1959 when he was just 17, played for 12 seasons with the club, and was capped 370 times for The Blues. During his time at the front of the team, he scored 164 goals during league play and 202 goals across all competitions.
Despite this huge glut of goals, Tambling only ever won one major trophy with the Blues, the League Cup in the 1964/65 season.
Peter Osgood
It is rare to get players as intrinsically linked to a club as Peter Osgood is to Chelsea. Osgood joined the Blues in 1964 and went on to play for them for a full decade.
During that time, he scored 150 goals across all competitions, with 105 of them being in league play. Osgood was incredibly popular with the team and the fans. Nicknamed the “King of Stamford Bridge”, he led somewhat of a playboy lifestyle that constantly had his name in the papers.
Because of his many goals and 384 total appearances, Osgood’s ashes were interred under the penalty spot at the Shed End of Stamford Bridge after his death and, in 2010, a statue of him was raised just outside of the West Stand.
Osgood was and continues to be, a true Chelsea legend.
Tammy Abraham
Kevin Oghenetega Tamaraebi Bakumo-Abraham, more commonly known as Tammy Abraham, is the kind of homegrown talent that Chelsea excels at producing. An academy graduate of Chelsea, Abraham was loaned to Bristol City where he won Player of the Season.
On his return to Chelsea, Abraham became the youngest player to score three goals in a match for the Blues in the Premier League era.
Abraham’s tenacity, eye for a shooting chance, and speed on the ball have allowed him to take a consistent starting spot away from some of best forwards in the game, notably Olivier Giroud, and has given Chelsea the kind of goal-scoring punch that given them good odds, according to Marathonbet, of beating current Premiership favorites Liverpool in the 5th round of the FA cup.
Abraham has also been picked up by the England team after turning down a place on the Nigerian national team to join Harry Kane, and is in the running for the Premier League’s Golden Boot award this season.
Roy Bentley
Signed in 1947 for the modest transfer fee of £11,000, Roy Bentley went on to become Chelsea’s fourth highest goal scorer of all time. He had previously been part of a very successful striking team at Newcastle and had left the club over a disagreement about, of all things, the state of his bath.
Over 367 appearances that spanned the course of ten years, Bentley scored 150 goals. He was even the captain of the team when Chelsea won their first league title during the 1954/55 season.
Didier Drogba
No list of Chelsea strikers would be complete without Didier Yves Drogba Tébily, the Ivory Coast legend that arrived at Stamford Bridge during the Roman Abramovich take-over.
Drogba might not have a scoring total to match some of the legends on this list and, truth be told, it took him a while to find his feet at Chelsea, but he will go down in history as having scored some of the most vital goals for the blues.
Having won the Premier League title in his debut season, which was incidentally the first time Chelsea had won the title in 50 years, Drogba went on to score the record for most goals in a Premier League season, hammering home 29 goals in the 2009/10 season.
In addition to helping the Blues score the first league trophy in 50 years, Drogba also scored the equalizer and the winning goal that clinched the Champions League title for Chelsea.
