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Armando Broja is to miss the remainder of the season after suffering an ACL injury and with his absence Chelsea have been thrown into a deeper bind about their striking options than they might reasonably have expected at the start of the season.

The Albanian international, 21, suffered the injury during his side's friendly against Aston Villa in Abu Dhabi on Monday. "Having sustained a knee injury during the first half of Sunday's friendly against Aston Villa, Armando underwent further assessment following the club's return to England," Chelsea said in a statement. "Scan results from those assessments have unfortunately confirmed an anterior cruciate ligament rupture and that surgery will be required. Following the operation, Armando will work closely with the club's medical department during his rehabilitation and is expected to miss the remainder of the 2022/23 campaign."

The injury is naturally a hammer blow for Broja, who had made 18 appearances in all competitions for Chelsea this season and was looking to build on an impressive loan spell with Southampton, for whom he scored nine goals in 38 games in 2021-22. Equally, it brings quite a headache for Graham Potter, who had named Broja in his starting lineup for the two games prior to the Premier League's World Cup break. 

Goals are the most hard to find commodity for a Chelsea side that has scored fewer than Erling Haaland has alone for Manchester City in the English top flight this season. There were no guarantees that Broja was going to get them, but at nearly 6 foot 3 inches tall, the youngster offered a line-leading focal point that was rather thin on the ground at Stamford Bridge. Potter has plenty of forwards to call upon but the likes of Kai Havertz and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have looked ill fits at the point of attack as often as not. The former can dovetail ably with midfield and when he hits purple patches he looks to be a radical modern forward, a pivot point for the likes of Raheem Sterling and Mason Mount who can weigh in with key goals. But as often as not, one can watch 15 minutes of a Chelsea game without being able to say with confidence that Havertz is playing.

The same is often true of Aubameyang, who seems to have honed his poaching game to such a fine art that he offers little beyond getting in shooting positions. Potter's tactical approach has often indicated he wants more from his center forwards and his No.9 started just two of Chelsea's last five matches, a near dead rubber against Dinamo Zagreb and a chastening reunion with his former club Arsenal.

With doubts over both these two, the obvious response to Broja's injury would be to bring in a new striker anyway. There are no guarantees that the Albanian is the man for the future at Stamford Bridge, and the Blues' interest in Youssoufa Moukoko and Jonathan David hints they are ready for upgrades at the point of attack. Then there is Christopher Nkunku, a widely coveted player where CBS Sports sources indicate the Blues are at the front of the queue, having already undertaken medical examinations on the RB Leipzig forward. His departure from Germany has long been expected in the summer of 2023 and it seems unlikely the timetable could be accelerated to midseason. And regardless, Nkunku himself suffered an injury on the eve of the World Cup, which would put his immediate fitness in doubt.

Not least of all that is because any marquee forward will want to be playing Champions League football going forward. While Chelsea remains in this season's edition, tor now it is at least a matter of some doubt whether Chelsea can make it that far going forward. The slow start to the season that cost Thomas Tuchel his job and a five game winless run under his successor have the Blues four places and eight points off fourth placed Tottenham, albeit having played 14 games to Spurs' 15. There is time aplenty to make up that game but one of the defining stories of the second half of this bisected English season could be an almighty scrap between as many as six clubs -- Chelsea, Tottenham, Manchester United, Liverpool, Newcastle and even Brighton -- for third and fourth behind Manchester City and Arsenal.

To get a top four spot Chelsea may well need an injection of scoring at just the moment when the injury plague that ravaged their defense seems to have advanced up the field. And yet the midseason break of the first season of the Todd Boehly era hardly seems like an opportune moment to do business. Broja might not have been the answer to Chelsea's goal problems. But as this season wears on it is easy to see Potter and company wondering if the striker they need might have slipped away in a midseason friendly.