Thibaut Courtois for Diego Costa - Should Chelsea make the swap?

In the past few seasons, Chelsea has sent an astounding number of loanees all over Europe. At the beginning of the 2013-14 season they as had many as 24 players loaned out in England and outside in a bid to assist their development. Arguably the brightest light in a mass of spotlights has been one Thibaut Courtois.

Without even donning a Chelsea jersey once, he has already managed to become one of Chelsea’s best player and a sort of fan favorite. In 2013 he was named the best keeper in Spain and was nominated for the FIFA World XI team. This shows exactly how much he has accomplished, showing exactly why the player himself thinks he’s ready to have a go at the premier league next season.

So, when the daily star ran out a story about how Chelsea were prepared to swap loan sensation with the superb Diego Costa, I decided to take a look into whether Chelsea should or should not snatch at the chance to bring in one of the premier strikers in Europe to Stamford Bridge.

It is common knowledge that the blues have lacked a clinical striker up top to go with all the creativity they get from their midfield. On many occasions Chelsea have reportedly shown interest in Diego Costa, who is exactly the type of player Jose Mourinho seems to like; strong, clinical, hard working and most of all, efficient when operating in limited space. Buying Costa makes a lot of sense on Chelsea’s part as he would slot into the starting 11 immediately as the best striker in the squad.However, it may not be the smartest thing to sell off Courtois in order to bring Costa to London.

Firstly, the Belgian has been on a terrific run of form and has shown drastic improvement every year that he has played with Athletico Madrid. He is one of the best and most consistent Goalkeepers in the world already. Some might even argue that he has proven himself to an extent where he is probably superior to Petr Cech already. This is a huge advantage for the blues as it would be very difficult for them to find a keeper who is even ready to fill in Cech’s boots; let alone be able to go 1 up on him. Courtois is a fantastic keeper at a very young age and this factor works in Chelsea’s favor.

Second, keepers are almost criminally undervalued in the transfer market today and even someone as good as the big Belgian might not fetch enough money to meet Costa’s evaluation. Premier strikers are always unbelievably expensive and when someone has had a season like Diego Costa is having this time around, its just adding fuel to the fire.

Third, and probably most important, Chelsea are well placed with FFP, they do not have a shortage of money to spend, and with the new TV deal and Adidas deal to kick in next season, they will have an even more relaxed margin to play around with. Waiting till the summer would be very beneficial as it would allow Chelsea to trigger his release clause (which is reported to be around £32mn) and bring both elite talents to the premier league in the cost of one.Even if they do face competition from Arsenal they have more than enough financial muscle to outbid their London rivals.

Another thing that factors in is that Chelsea already have a very good striker in Romelu Lukaku waiting to come back to Stamford Bridge. They do not however, possess a goalkeeper; or for that matter even a goalkeeping target; who can come in and fill the boots of Petr Cech quite like Courtois.

So in many ways, the Diego Costa to Chelsea is a very interesting pairing which would certainly improve the team immediately, but selling your best keeper in order to get a striker would be absurd bordering on foolishness from the London club.