Chelsea must learn from Man City and Liverpool amid Raphinha and Raheem Sterling transfer links

  The transfer window is like marmite; either you love it, or you hate it. Whichever position you take, if you’re a Chelsea supporter, yo...

 

The transfer window is like marmite; either you love it, or you hate it. Whichever position you take, if you’re a Chelsea supporter, you would never expect it to be dull. Chelsea seems to have been slow off the mark with rivals making signings early, but that has not stopped the Blues being the talking point where transfers are concerned.

This is in part due to the arrival of new owners, the Boehly Consortium, who are expected to bung a lot of cash into the transfer ‘war chest’ as part of their golden handshake with the club and its supporters.

There is a strong case to be made that Chelsea needs to be very active this transfer window, not least to replace the players that are gone or going and to allow Thomas Tuchel to progress his plan to make Chelsea into a team of his design.

Many supporters would agree that Chelsea’s transfer policy has been hit and miss for years and more frugal than some would have you believe; the ‘one in and one out’ policy Marina Granovskaia implemented for example.

Over the last few years player sales have been as important as expensive signings with one subsidising the other. Even the £97.5 million spent on Romelu Lukaku was covered by the sales of Tammy Abraham (£34 million); Kurt Zouma (£30 million); Fikayo Tomori (£30 million); Davide Zappacosta (£5 million) and Victor Moses (£4 million).

We are led to believe that this is no longer the strategy and that Boehly is willing to spend £200 million to get Tuchel’s squad ship shape for an assault on the Premier League title next season. If that is the case, then there is much work to do. Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen need to be replaced and the departure of Romelu Lukaku on loan to Inter Milan will need to be addressed.

Question marks hang over a lot of ageing and squad players such as Cesar Azpilicueta, Marcos Alonso, Kepa Arrizabalaga, Malang Saar, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Ross Barkley, Abdul-Rahman Baba and Kenedy.

This is before we get into who might go to accommodate new arrivals where the futures of players such as Hakim Ziyech, Christian Pulisic, Timo Werner, Jorginho and even N’Golo Kante are far from certain.

So, in the blink of an eye there appear to be question marks over the Chelsea futures of no less than 13 players from last season’s squad to add to the three known departures. It seems to me to be completely unrealistic that Chelsea will ship out and replace almost an entire squad in one transfer window.

There is a debate to be had as to who needs to be shipped out and replaced, but it isn’t going to happen in one window. Boehly and Tuchel are hopefully constructing a long-term plan and vision and this summer’s transfers will represent stage one of this and I am sure there will be many stages to follow.

If Boehly follows a similar plan to Manchester City and Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola, then it could take at least three to five seasons for Chelsea to undertake a complete transformation of the squad. Jurgen Klopp arrived at Liverpool in October 2015. He inherited a squad including:

Ádám Bogdán, Adam Lallana, Alberto Moreno, Brad Smith, Christian Benteke, Daniel Sturridge, Danny Ings, Danny Ward, Dejan Lovren, Divock Origi, Emre Can, James Milner, João Carlos Teixeira, Joe Allen,

Joe Gomez, Jon Flanagan, Jordan Henderson, Jordon Ibe, José Enrique, Kolo Touré, Lucas, Mamadou Sakho, Martin Škrtel, Nathaniel Clyne, Philippe Coutinho, Roberto Firmino, Sheyi Ojo, Simon Mignolet and Steven Caulker. 

Todd Boehly is a disciple of the Money Ball method and while buying players based on analytics has proven to be successful at Liverpool with Ian Graham, their Director of Research helping to decide which players to acquire by feeding information on games into his formulas, statistical analysis can only be one side of the equation.

As has been proven with the signing of Romelu Lukaku and the dismal failure it proved to be, character and attitude and other human traits play a big part in the success of any transfer, as well as circumstance and luck.

Hopefully, between Boehly’s data analytics approach and Tuchel’s acumen as a man manager and judge of character, Chelsea can make the right signings for the club going forward. Just don’t count on the whole squad being revamped in one transfer window this summer.

It could well take three to five seasons to see the completion of the overhaul the squad needs, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to only see three to five new arrivals and departures in this window.