I'll still keep you up: £15m Anelka joins Chelsea but vows to beat Bolton's rivals

Avram Grant substantially raised his £12m offer to secure Anelka — as signalled by Sportsmail in October — when Bolton called his bluff over looking elsewhere if Anelka did not sign in time to face Tottenham.

Chelsea boss Grant, who believes Anelka's best days are ahead of him at 28, is backing the former Arsenal and Real Madrid striker to form a lethal link with Didier Drogba, currently on African Nations Cup duty in Ghana.

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But while Anelka realised Champions League football, he left the Reebok with a pledge to Bolton manager Gary Megson that he will still play his part in their survival battle.

Megson, who will now turn to £9m-rated Swede Johan Elmander at Toulouse, said: 'Nic came in this morning to say his goodbyes and we sat down and had 10 minutes.

'I said: "I don't want you to go, but what I would like you to do is to score against everybody who is in and around where we are in the table. Get a goal and make sure you beat them". He said he'd do that.'

France striker Anelka, who has hit 11 goals for Bolton this season, signed a fourand- a-half year contract for Chelsea and became the most expensive player ever with total transfer fees of £84.8m.

Chelsea are his eighth club in nine years. Grant said: 'He's learned from his mistakes of the past. He had a bad reputation, but he has changed. He was young. There was no doubt he was very talented as he scored lots of goals for Arsenal and others.

'What's important to me is the quality and character of the person, and he will be very good for us. I think Anelka can take the chances that will make the difference in matches.

'He can be as good a scorer as Drogba. He has done a good job until now, and at a big club he can be even better. His best years could well be ahead of him.'

Anelka's latest move yielded a remarkable £7m profit for Bolton after Sam Allardyce made him the club's record signing from Fenerbahce in 2006.

Chairman Phil Gartside said: 'Nobody here wanted him to go, but when a player wants to leave they no longer have the club's best interests at heart.'

Megson will ask Kevin Davies to revert to a traditional centre forward tomorrow against Blackburn, who once paid a club record £7.5m for the striker under Roy Hodgson's stewardship.

Megson said: 'We will not be able to replace Nicolas Anelka like -for-like. They're not about, that's why Chelsea have paid the money they have, and why they didn't have a long list of options. 'We will try to share around the burden of goalscoring. We have to learn to play without Nic.'

Radek Cerny is expected to face Anelka today but the Czech goalkeeper fears he will be following England's Paul Robinson, the man he replaced in midweek, out of Tottenham.

Cerny, aware boss Juande Ramos has launched a keeper search, said: 'If a club do not extend your contract six months before it expires, they aren't interested. I'll probably leave at the end of the season.'