Chelsea are potentially in a tricky situation regarding one of their big players.
As recently as a year ago, Ben Chilwell was considered a certain starter, a key player and a leader in the dressing room. He was one of the highest paid and most experienced players in the squad, and one of the few remnants of our last trophy winning team.
Another injury hit season, combined with the rise of Marc Cucurella since the Spaniard returned from surgery in the New Year, has cost Chilwell dearly though. It became clear through the course of the summer that he wasn’t Enzo Maresca’s ideal player at left back, but we still didn’t expect the England international to be quite so brutally turfed out.
The coach made it clear that Chilwell wasn’t really for him, and that it was “better” if the left back left. After the return from the USA tour, the 27 year old was sent to train with the other exiles who the club wanted out. That certainly made his status abundantly clear.
https://twitter.com/JacobsBen/status/1828801211287658551
Chelsea could be stuck with highly paid outcast
But there’s a problem – the same wages which make Chelsea so keen to move him on make other teams reluctant to sign him. The Daily Mail report today that Man U are not interested, and it seems there are no offers forthcoming from elsewhere as the transfer deadline closes in.
So what do the Blues do now? Leave him doing fitness work for four months? Reintegrate him into the main squad? As much as they’ve wanted it to be clear that he needs to find a move, they’d surely be mad to leave a potentially useful first team player doing nothing for all that time, watching his value plummet.
The controversial “bomb squad” tactics the club have used are about to meet their biggest test yet.
