Most Chelsea fans couldn’t really believe it last summer when their club bought Robert Sanchez.
This bang average stopper had lost his place at Brighton to an ageing alternate, and now he was somehow supposed to be the answer at Chelsea?
Well, it worked out about as well as you’d expect. Sanchez played pretty poorly, got injured and lost his place to Djordje Petrovic, who proved to be a better (if not amazing) option.
Come this summer and we are back to square one – or square minus one in fact. Petrovic has been injured so he’s out of favour – and Sanchez is back in goal. The Spaniard started our game against Manchester City last week and wasn’t great. It was just the sort of performance we’ve come to expect from him. A couple of nice saves, a couple of awful moments with the ball at his feet, and a soft goal conceded.
Mozo Football ran his stats from the game and they weren’t pretty:
🇪🇸 Robert Sanchez during the first game week at in the Premier League:
Goals prevented (-1.2) – 20th (worst)
Save percentage (60%) – 16th
Accurate passes (80%) – 13thEnzo Maresca only flaw currently is he needs to make this call sooner rather than later.#CFC #CHEMCI #CHELSEA pic.twitter.com/BoaEBgrdwM
— Mozo Football (@MozoFootball) August 20, 2024
They claim that Chelsea need to dump Sanchez as soon as possible for this summer’s signing, Filip Jorgensen.
We’d be inclined to agree – we have no real idea yet if Jorgensen will be an upgrade on Sanchez or Petrovic, but at least he’s an unknown quantity. We know what we get from those two, and it’s not great. Jorgensen is supposedly far better with his feet, so even if he proves as soft on shots as Sanchez did with Mateo Kovacic’s effort on Sunday, he will at least bring something to the team when they’re on the ball.
We would imagine it’s Jorgensen’s game on Thursday, and if he does well, each subsequent Premier League match will be a referendum on Sanchez’s place in the first team. As for Petrovic’s future – that’s another whole mess that needs to be sorted out.
