If you’d checked the odds on the top 10 betting sites before the close of the January window, you’d have seen Chelsea with pretty great odds to finish in the top 4 and complete their basic objective for this season of making it back into the Champions League table.
But a total lack of activity from the Blues in the closing stages of the window, followed by further poor results, have seen their odds lengthen, and their league position drop from 2nd, to 4th, to 6th.
Those points missed out of course count more than players we failed to sign, but it’s all interlinked. January saw a number of first team squad players leave, permanently or on loan, while there were no significant additions.
Mathis Amougou, a 19 year old midfielder, was the only signing, and Enzo Maresca made it very clear in his first worst about the youngster that he wasn’t going to be featuring for the first team. Meanwhile important options like Cesare Casadei, Joao Felix and Axel Disasi were allowed to go.
The inevitable then happened – on the same night that the window closed, Chelsea saw both their strikers get injured. That was followed last week by Noni Madueke picking up a hamstring injury.
Suddenly, the decision to let players like Joao Felix go looks very short sighted.
Felix already apparently has several clubs across Europe who could see value in signing him, given his technical ability and attacking potential, and there’s already a lot of talk about Milan wanting to sign him permanently, as well as city rivals Inter being interested. Felix is by no means the ideal player to fill a gap left by Madueke or Nicolas Jackson or Marc Guiu – but we are just short of attacking options in general right now.
What looked like some sensible January squad trimming now looks short sighted, with our sporting directors more keen to think about improving player values and decreasing wage spend rather than focusing on preparing the best possible squad for Enzo Maresca to compete with for the rest of this season.
Not signing an alternative to Nicolas Jackson in their first summer was understandable, to not do it last summer was negligent, and to gamble on the Senegal star staying fit the rest of this campaign without proper backup is criminal. Now Chelsea are paying the price with poor results, and the very real prospect of crashing out of the top 4.
