Diego Costa: Golden Boot Winner?

A couple of seasons ago Chelsea would have run over a team by four goals to nothing and not one would have been scored by a striker. Now, that’s not the case. The blues have scored 36 goals in the league this season, Loic Remy has two of those goals, the legendary Didier Drogba with 3 in the competition and of course, Diego Costa with the highest input of 12 goals in 13 games. A very different story to last season and a couple more previously.

Jose Mourinho’s decision in the summer to offload Fernando Torres, Demba Ba and Samuel Eto’o seems to have paid off. The trio of last season all together scored 19 goals in the league last season and this season, Drogba, Remy and Costa have a total tally of 17 goals, just two shy of the trio of last season.

Diego Costa came back from his suspension after collecting his fifth caution against Sunderland, he however wasn’t missed in Chelsea’s 3-0 defeat against Spurs, as Didier Drogba did the business on the day along with Eden Hazard and Remy, but with the Spaniard still un-prolific in Europe, he now hadn’t scored in four games. In the second half after a good all round move from Branislav Ivanovic and Hazard, Diego Costa coolly finished to complete a glorious team goal and set his League tally to 12, just 2 behind this season’s current top scorer, Sergio Aguero.

Speaking of Sergio Aguero, after 7 minutes in City’s games against Everton the Argentine forward had to limp off with tears in his eyes and a lot of people thought he might be out for a very long time, but Manuel Pellegrini said he would be out for a month with a knee injury. Aguero looked like the player who would run away with the top scorer award, but his injury could see the bookmakers reconsider their odds as the Argentine could miss a significant amount of games with Diego Costa back in league scoring form.

Chelsea haven’t had a golden boot winner since 2010 when they won the league, Didier Drogba scored 29 goals that season to win the golden boot with a memorable hat trick against Wigan on the final day to set him apart from Wayne Rooney who ended the season on 26. Costa is already a revelation at Chelsea but winning the golden boot in his debut season would certainly be a remarkable landmark and could potentially set him up to become a potential Chelsea legend.

However, it hasn’t all been roses for Costa since his arrival, the Spaniard has to check his disciplinary record in the league, he has now been issued his sixth yellow card in the league after just coming back from suspension –though it wasn’t deserved- and he is yet to find his shooting boots in Europe for Chelsea. Chelsea fans would be hoping he finally starts to find the back of the net in the Champions League as the advancement to play tougher teams in the knockout stages has been made. Costa once gave Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo a run for their money in the La Liga, it certainly won’t be a surprise if he out gunned others in the Premier League, the Chelsea faithful’s would be keeping their fingers crossed on that one.