Matt Law’s piece about Chelsea’s interest in signing Joao Felix has a paragraph at the bottom which attempts to explain just what on earth is going to go on with our bloated squad, which continues to grow larger even as we should be doing all we can to trim it down.
As every Monday comes around, we think that this will finally be the week that sees the vast first team group, consisting of about 40 players, some of whom are training in separate “outcast” sessions, will start to be whittled away.
Yet every passing week seems to end up with a net gain of players at the club as their addiction to buying continues.
Chelsea with a huge amount of work to do
Law claims that the intention is still to shrink things massively by the time September comes along:
“Chelsea are confident that the first-team squad will be a manageable size for head coach Enzo Maresca once the transfer window shuts,” Law wrote.
“It is believed the club are hoping to have a first-team squad of around 23 or 24 outfield players, with a number of players in line to leave either permanently or on loan.”
There are two weeks to go until the window closes, and about 20 players still to shift, so they had really better get a shift on.
Kepa Arrizabalaga, Trevoh Chalobah, Bashir Humphreys, Carney Chukwuemeka, Cesare Casadei, Omari Kellyman, Diego Moreira, Tino Anjorin, Armando Broa, David Fofana, Deivid Washington, Angelo Santos, Romelu Lukaku… the list goes on.
Last week did see the first trickle of some loans starting to be agreed – Gabriel Slonina, Alfie Gilchrist and Eddie Beach all found new destinations for the season. But we’re going to have to step things up significantly to get all this done by September 1st.
