The Chelsea Rebuild, Part 1

We’ve been putting this one off in the hope that by delaying, Chelsea would solve a bit of the work for us.

You see, the problem with Chelsea is that there are too many moving parts.

FAR too many.

So many, in fact, that despite the fact that Chelsea seem to be apocalypse preppers when it comes to backroom staff — employing seemingly two of everything to make their football team operational — it’s going to be impossible to sell and loan everyone that needs to be sold before the window closes.

They own two clubs, with Chelsea the flagship and Strasbourg the B-team with potential. But even inside the flagship club there are just too many players. Many teams have a Cup GK and a League GK. Chelsea had a Cup starting XI. They literally ran an entirely different Conference League and Premier League rotation for the first half of the season. The benefit was presumably keeping players fresher and injury free (which they still struggled with at times), and keeping morale high on a bloated squad the likes of which have rarely been seen before.

Which leaves us, dear reader, with a conundrum: to do this comprehensively will take a metric fuckton of work. We don’t actually have that kind of bandwidth around these parts, and we are not actually employed by any of these football teams. [Though we ARE employable and available as consultants — respond to the email if you are interested in sending money our way, though I will warn you that I am expensive. -TK]

So if this rebuild seems slightly surface-level at times, it is not our fault... It’s Behdad’s.

It’s his fault for buying too many fucking players the last couple of seasons and generally running the club like a nouveau riche third wife, and not an old money matriarch determined to protect the Abramovich dynasty at all costs.

Confused? In Kim’s research, she found Chelsea have 47 players who either played PL minutes for them this year, cost a 7-figure transfer fee, or make a 7-figure wage.

They had nine paid GKs on contracts last summer, eight of whom were not (apparently) good enough to oust Robert Sanchez, and now they are once again shopping for a GK that can both stop shots and kick the ball well enough not to turn their entire buildup from goal kicks into a Cirque du Soleil contortionist interlude.

What is their deal?

Those of you who have been following for a while know that we were fairly scathing toward many of Chelsea’s activities last summer. From finding a way to jettison the best academy management team in England, to buying too many players, to dramatically overpaying for players who were barely good enough to crack their squad (Felix and Neto come to mind), it was a rough summer for those in charge.

That said, we were also very clear that Chelsea had a highly-talented squad that only needed some minor additions/tweaking to be favourites to finish in the Champions League spots.

They got there in the end (finishing fourth, three points ahead of Newcastle, and winning the UEFA Conference League), but it was a sweaty run-in.

What now? Weirdly, the remit is mostly the same as last summer:

1. Shore up a couple of holes in the squad, including starting GK and LWF, while shuffling around depth from their giant list of players and signing the Liam Delaps of the world.

2. Sell a LOT of players to move them off the wage books and recoup some level of enormous cash expenditure.

3. Hope that Marseca’s tactics work better with a GK that can kick and a bit more diverse weaponry across the squad.

Now the good news is that Chelsea et al own a ton of assets and are fantastically rich. They found the PSR loopholes and spent like they stole an AmEx Black card and no one was going to find out about it. Which means that the tools are there to buy who they want to. Or they should be, anyway. Presuming they make some sales, first. Much like people’s marriages — you never really know what’s going on inside the house until someone files for divorce and leaks all the dirty laundry to the press.

If you’re wondering who to praise/yell at: these first two sections were mostly written by Ted, and the rest mostly by Kim.

Current status

This is concerning.

Chelsea got more defensively solid as the season went on, but their attack also got a lot less potent in the second half of the year.

A whopping 5 new players have been registered by Chelsea for the Club World Cup. Striker Liam Delap, midfielder Andrey Santos, defenders Mamadou Sarr and Aarón Anselmino, and goalkeeper Mike Penders all have the opportunity to see their first action for the club in the competition.

18-year-old Brazilian star Estêvão Willian is also joining the club this summer. A future deal for Geovany Quenda has already been locked up for 2026, and a similar transfer for Strasbourg striker Emanuel Emegha is heavily rumoured.

Who should they keep?

Despite a drop in production over the second half of the season, Cole Palmer was still one of the best players in the Premier League and should be the centerpiece of the team for years to come. He’s equal parts goal scorer and playmaker from the No. 10 position, racking up 90 key passes and 121 shots.

Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez are a very nice 6-8 combo, no complaints here. There’s no reason these guys shouldn’t continue on as Chelsea’s first choice midfield underneath Palmer.

And then there’s a lot of “that’s fine I guess,” not anything I’d consider exceptional or disastrous. I’ll do my best to be comprehensive in this bullet point section but there are simply Too Many Guys to hit them all.

• Reece James was an above average defender and passer when he was healthy. It would be cool if he could stay healthy. Malo Gusto is nothing special as a passer but keeps it simple and avoids turnovers. They’re probably set at RB.

• Left back is a situation that’s hard to improve. Marc Cucurella has his fair share of great moments and absolute stinkers; at a wage of £9m per season he is probably not moveable, so prepare to enjoy another season with him as the starter.

• Levi Colwill and Tosin Adarabioyo were pretty good and should continue to have jobs next season. They might have some new competition for places, but they’ll remain as important parts of the squad.

• Chelsea were lucky that Caicedo and Fernandez were so durable, because their midfield depth wasn’t great. It’ll be interesting to see if the aforementioned Essugo and Santos start rotating with them, rather than going out on loan.

• The two-headed monster of Noni Madueke and Pedro Neto looks likely to continue at right wing, despite the frustrating nature of their play at times. Madueke is an elite shooter and dribbler from the wing, but can get tunnel vision and often goes alone when he should pass. Neto is a very good passer for a winger, but offers almost no shooting threat. While Madueke has been the subject of transfer rumours, him starting over Neto so often suggests he’ll stick around.

Who’s for sale, and what’s their budget?

If I was the person who was in charge of figuring out which Chelsea players to sell, how to price them and who I’d try to shop them to, I would just cry. Every day, I would sob into my pillow and ask God why I have been given this Sisyphean task. Every time you think you’re making progress on cleaning up the pile, your boss throws a João Félix onto it for no reason.

Chelsea’s budget is fake, but eventually, they’re going to run out of pieces of their business to sell off to shell companies. Luckily, they do have quite a few valuable sellable assets, and they could raise themselves one heck of a nice transfer budget this summer. For real, not in the accounting trick way.

There are, unfortunately, also several non-sellable assets. Because there are so many dudes here, I’m just going to separate them into some buckets real quick. Once again, there might be someone who doesn’t get mentioned who you’re curious about, because 47 fucking players.

Albatross contracts, probably can’t be sold or loaned for full wages

• João Félix

• Ben Chilwell

• Raheem Sterling

• Mykhailo Mudryk

The Marc Guiu Zone: Low fee but wages too high so???

• Marc Guiu

Unsellable but they’re not that expensive so whatever

• Datro Fofana

• Armando Broja

• Deivid Washington

Guys who can be sold but you might have to eat shit on the fee

• Robert Sánchez

• All the other goalkeepers go here too

• Axel Disasi

• Wesley Fofana

• Romeo Lavia

• Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall

• Christopher Nkunku

• Omari Kellyman

You can make money on this

• Trevoh Chalobah

• Carney Chukwuemeka

• Lesley Ugochukwu

• Nicolas Jackson

• All the Cobham kids

Chelsea should probably sell at least 10 players this summer. Let’s stare at some radars for a couple of the more controversial proposed sales.

Personally, I’d have kept Nicolas Jackson as a rotation striker, not bought Liam Delap at all, and spent a lot of money on a top striker if I was Chelsea. But now that they’ve got Delap in the building and haven’t actually made their striker position better, I must regretfully advocate for the sale of Jackson to responsibly fund the purchase of someone we’ll talk about tomorrow.

Jackson went missing down the stretch for Chelsea, with an injury and red card keeping him from contributing positively to their Champions League qualification. His misses have often been frustrating. But a 23-year-old with his shot volume, locations, and pressing work is going to be interesting to someone.

While Robert Sánchez’s claims are elite and his shot stopping is above average, he’s just a terrible fit for a team that expects their goalkeeper to be comfortable with the ball at his feet, and coming off his line. He’s run down a couple years of amortization on his £20m transfer fee, and his wage of £3m a year is totally reasonable for any Premier League club.

Chelsea can find someone to buy him at a fee that doesn’t give them a PSR hit and match his wages, so they should do that.

Tomorrow, we look into who Chelsea should buy. Our targets: A goalkeeper, a center back, a left winger, and a striker.

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