Chelsea have been a day late and a dollar short in recent years, but American owners BlueCo are starting to find success at Stamford Bridge.
Ditching Mauricio Pochettino for ‘project manager’ Enzo Maresca has proved to be an excellent move, with Pep Guardiola’s protege bringing a sharp injection of technical and possession-based quality to the outfit.
Third in the Premier League and cruising in the Conference League, the Blues have much to look forward to in 2025, with the summer transfer window proving to be a success.
Chelsea's summer transfer window
In August 2023, Chelsea signed Cole Palmer from Manchester for a £42.5m fee. This, truly, might be one of the best signings that the club have made in several decades, with Sky Sports’ Jamie Carragher pronouncing the 22-year-old as “the best player in the Premier League right now” in October.
This year, however, Chelsea have enjoyed more success in the market, welcoming several impactful stars to complement Palmer, who was somewhat isolated in his brilliance under Pochettino.
Jadon Sancho, Pedro Neto and Joao Felix have all been added to the cause this summer, strengthening a frontline that is now among the most formidable in English football.
A host of younger players have been signed too. Chelsea operate prudently, looking to bolster every level with top talent to perpetuate prominence.
However, the club’s ambitions sometimes stray into the realm of unnecessary. To be clear, the noise around Chelsea’s spending this summer was ridiculous, for there were plenty of outgoings to mitigate the high-priced spending. By the end of the window, Chelsea’s net spend was only around £50m. However, Manchester United’s, for example, stood at a towering £94m.
Even so, some deals just shouldn’t have happened.
Chalkboard
Football FanCast's Chalkboard series presents a tactical discussion from around the global game.
Chelsea's most "pointless" transfer
Chelsea hijacked Brighton & Hove Albion’s deal for a certain Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall in July, completing a £30m move on a six-year contract that, as yet, has been rather fruitless, with the industrious midfielder restricted to a limited role in the squad.
The 26-year-old has only made three second-half appearances in the Premier League for Chelsea, though, compounding that lack of opportunity, hasn’t even been granted a place in the matchday squad across five of the past six fixtures.
He’s impressed in the Conference League, to be fair, though he’s only started two of Chelsea’s three matches, and, frankly, hasn’t exactly been pitted against the highest calibre of opposition.
As journalist Zach Lowy aptly puts it below, the Chelsea midfielder is stuck on the margins of Maresca’s squad, and though it’s good for the Londoners to have the depth, one can’t help but question the decision to reject Brighton, where he could have become a superstar, in place of a high-class Chelsea team with some brilliant midfielders.
This is a shame, especially since the ace, whose salary is reported to total at a reasonable £80k per week, was considered to be Chelsea’s next version of N’Golo Kante.
In 2015/16, Leicester defied every realm of possibility to conquer the Premier League and create one of the greatest stories in the history of sport. Kante was the veritable lifeblood of the Foxes’ success, and Dewsbury-Hall played his part too, with the youth cleaning the France international’s boots.
Kante then transferred to Chelsea in a deal worth £32m (a similar fee to Dewsbury-Hall’s, by the way), and went on to win the English top flight again and the Champions League too.
Lauded for his “incredible quality” by former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, Kante is one of Chelsea’s most remarkable players of the 21st century, and so perhaps it’s inevitable that Dewsbury-Hall would look up to the star, following in his footsteps as he did this summer by joining from the Foxes.
Dewsbury-Hall’s a talented midfielder, sure, but he’s not endowed with quite the same awe-inspiring brilliance as the French legend, and so perhaps made the wrong turn when arriving at that critical juncture this summer.
The Daily Briefing have recently revealed that Dewsbury-Hall is attracting interest from Aston Villa, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur and that Chelsea would be willing to consider his loan exit this coming winter.
A player should always aim big and back themselves, but a touch of realism can propel an aspiring star quite a distance, and with Romeo Lavia and Moises Caicedo serving at the centre, Enzo Fernandez too, was the one-time Leicester sensation ever going to knock himself into a prominent starting role with the regularity that fits a player of his skill?
Moreover, his very presence in Maresca’s squad might have inflicted detrimental damage on Carney Chukwuemeka’s hopes of succeeding at the club, for the 21-year-old talent has not featured this season and is beginning to attract interest from suitors such as Ipswich Town.
Look, no one of a Chelsea persuasion wants to see Dewsbury-Hall fail, not least after he cost £30m to bring in from Leicester. However, you have to be realistic about some things, and it’s not looking likely that he is going to stake his claim to a prominent role, not with such fierce and highly talented competition.
Perhaps he was envisaged as the next Kante after leaving his fox pack to sign at Stamford Bridge, but it’s a deal bearing a closer semblance to that of Danny Drinkwater, truth be told.
Dewsbury-Hall’s a good player, but he’s going to be consigned to a bit-part role for as long as he plies his trade under Maresca’s wing.
Fofana upgrade: Chelsea in talks to sign "one of the world's best CBs"
Chelsea are in talks to sign a new defender in a potential Kai Havertz repeat.
ByConnor HoldenNov 17, 2024
