Why the rebuild will take 3 transfer windows and why in the long run that might be good

Realistically, we're not getting 15 players out and replaced in one window

So the window opens next week, and nothing has happened yet. Not at Chelsea, or 16 other Premier League clubs. Only 3 PL clubs have signed anyone at this point, or sold anyone. One more has made a bid for a player. So its not exactly busy.

Some fans might be panicking already but I’m not. The World Cup makes it tough for everyone to sign players, and the chances are most deals will be done from beginning of July onwards.

I always judge the squad at the end of the window, not before. But obviously nothing happening has some fans concerned. I’ve been reflecting on things and am trying to bring a bit of realism. I just don’t think we’re gonna sell the 12-13 players everyone wants us to. Not because we’re not capable - we made £294m in sales last summer - but because there are so many players. Some are on good wages, others don’t have a market, others don’t yet want to go, and clubs know we want/need to sell, and we don’t want to sell for cheap, so it’s tough.

We do have players coming in already. Mike Penders, Valentin Barco, Geovany Quenda, and even Nicolas Jackson could all be part of the squad next season. Emanuel Emegha is coming in but looks likely to be loaned out. But the four names I mentioned can all contribute to Chelsea next season.

Mike Penders is one of the most promising GKs in Europe, Valentin Barco, written off by some purely because he signed from Strasbourg, has been excellent for Strasbourg and is in the Argentina World Cup Squad, and Geovany Quenda is one of the biggest talents in Europe.

As for Nicolas Jackson, he scored 11 goals as backup to Harry Kane last season, our current backup striker scored 1 PL goal all season. Xabi seems to want to take a look at him, though he did himself no favours last night for Senegal. Ideally, I think we still move him on, but we’d need a quality backup ST to replace him.

Sadly though, given just how much outward business we need to do and the areas we need to prioritise, signing a second choice striker just can’t be a priority right now.

It would be another player we have to sell and another player we have to replace. Ideally, yes you probably move him on. But getting a replacement to guarantee at least 10 PL goals who would join us, isn’t easy.

Overall, I see 16/17 players we can build around for this season. I’m not including Enzo Fernandez or Marc Cucurella, though on ability I’d keep both. But they seem to be leaving the club, so I’m planning without them. If they ended up staying, I’d happily integrate them.

I’d also add before people have a meltdown that in an ideal world there’s at least three players here - Malo Gusto, Nicolas Jackson and Pedro Neto - if not more, I’d ideally sell. I’m just not sure we have capacity, even if we had the best sporting directors in the world, to sell and replace that many players in one transfer window. I’m like everyone else, I think we need to be ruthless and get a lot of players out ASAP. I’m just trying to be realistic, because I don’t want us to all get our hopes up and get let down by the Sporting Directors yet again.

So here is the 17:

Penders, Reece, Gusto, Levi, Josh, Trev, Hato, Caicedo, Andrey, Barco, Neto, Estevao, Palmer, Quenda, Derry, JP, Jackson.

Add a third choice keeper, RQM, Genesis from Cobham, then add a veteran CB (to ensure Josh has a pathway), another LB, a top DM and top LW/10. Just four signings potentially, at least three of them starters. That, under new manager Xabi Alonso, with only one game per week, and far less rotation needed, would IMO be enough for us to finish in the top 3 or 4 relatively comfortably, and potentially win a domestic cup. Those are the clear objectives next season

This means the following go from our current squad:

Sell: Sanchez, Jorgensen, Delap, Garnacho, Enzo, Lavia (breaks my heart) Cucu.

Loan: Essugo, Gittens, Guiu, Emegha, Sarr, Anselmino, and at least two of Badiashile, Tosin Adarabioyo and Fofana. (One of these may end up staying, one may even be sold)

The 7 sales I noted above could bring in £200-250m. This is not including the likely sales of Axel Disasi and Tyrique George either, which will bring in potentially another £40-50m.

Obviously its not the ideal scenario we all want, ideally we’d sell all the players we want out this summer. But at least this way you permanently move on at least 7 players from the squad who finished the season, including those who want to go, and another few are closer to their contracts ending and can be moved on in January or the next summer.

That’s the reality of it, for me. The rebuild will have to be staggered. Partly due to the difficulty of moving so many players on and replacing them, partly as I don’t trust the Sporting Directors to even be competent. There is definitely a possibility of at least one of the CBs we want to go to end up staying. Wes Fofana earns 200k per week and doesn’t want to leavee, and some of the others I mentioned above to move on are on lower wages from a Chelsea perspective, but relatively high PL wise (Tosin Adarabioyo, on 102k per week, would be the fourth highest earner at Fulham, for example). As such, finding them a club to move permanently won’t be easy. So we may have to loan them and pay some of the wages.

My guess is a lot of these kind of players go to pre-season. So don’t be shocked when that happens, given the World Cup and the difficulty of moving them on, its highly likely several players who ultimately leave will be part of pre-season.

But my guess us in that process they will realise, or just get told by manager Xabi Alonso, they aren’t going to play almost at all this season. That will potentially mean they try and get themselves a loan move at least, sometime in August.

So yes, it will be tough. I won’t actually blame the Sporting Directors for not being able to sell all of them - it’s a LOT of players to get rid of and the market is tough. I DO blame the Sporting Directors for signing them in the first place. The players we need to get rid of now, actually cost us over £300m.

I actually did some rough numbers on players we’ve signed under the Sporting Directors (since 1st Jan 2023) who’ve flopped, not contributed or lived up to their potential. The list does not include the likes of Nicolas Jackson, Nomi Madueke, Pedro Neto or Robert Sanchez, who have all contributed, or Wes Fofana, bought pre-Sporting Directors and who has contributed a little. It tentatively includes Jamie Gittens, though he may yet have a future. The total spent came to around a whopping £532 MILLION (add the wasted money before they arrived, its at least another £117m on top of this). Imagine, if we’d spent even half more effectively we’d be in a much better place as a club and squad right now. So frustrating.

The argument they’d make to counter this, and its a legitimate one, is that we’ve brought in £750m in sales in the last four years, which to be fair is very good work, and covers the waste with about £101m left over. We’ve also broken even or made profit with most of those players financially.

So its not completely wasted money, but my thought is, sign better players who you end up keeping and become elite Chelsea players, and they make you money through success, and you don’t need to spend more to replace them and avoid such high player turnover. You can still have signings as investments, but do it more responsibly.

Of course, just to remind you all, the two guys primarily responsible for wasting all this money and landing us in this complete mess that Xabi Alonso walks into, are STILL employed by Chelsea Football Club. Absolutely staggering.

Back to my main point, in that it’s going to be a lot of work to rebuild this squad. To get out to 12-13 players who need to be gone permanently, and replace them with players who are good enough for Chelsea and can take us to the level we expect, will, realistically, in my view take at least two summer windows, and the winter window in between. Like everyone else, I’d prefer this process to be much quicker, but to me that’s the most realistic scenario.

I don’t necessarily mind this too much, because to build success takes time now. Instant success which fades quickly isn’t what I want. I know we’ve all waited a long time and don’t really want to wait any longer, but the mess the Sporting Directors created means it will now take longer. (Again, how they’re still in jobs is mind-blowing).

I want Xabi Alonso to build his team, playing his way, with players he wants, with the right mentality and character. Build a squad and a team which can go on to lift the biggest trophies every season in a sustainable way. If it takes a year or two to get to that, fine by me, as long as it’s done properly and well.

Xabi Alonso is without any question an elite coach who knows what he’s doing. So we need to give him time to rebuild not just this squad and but the club, not just on the pitch, but in terms of mentality, character, unity and team spirit. Xabi Alonso is a coach who is worth being patient with, as he delivers.

He’s transformed a club before at Leverkusen, on a smaller budget. He’s proven he’s an elite coach, winner and man manager who knows what a successful team and squad looks like. So we just need to allow him time to do that job, and keep holding the owners and directors of the club to account for backing him properly and not interfering negatively with his job.

The job to get Chelsea back where we should be, will now take more time, due to the abysmal squad building of the last 4 years, and we’ll have to be a little more patient, as frustrating as that is. But we do have the core of a talented squad and elite manager to coach and guide them.

We need to build around that. We need to be realistic about whats achievable this window, and get behind Xabi Alonso and his squad. Hopefully in time and with the right decisions, we’ll have a rebuilt squad, ready to challenge. We can only hope it works out how we all want it to, and hope against hope the two people who messed up the recruitment in the last 4 years finally learn from their mistakes, and rectify them.

The Score