Chelsea’s player trading model is still hard to get your head around.
At first it just felt like the new owners were clearing out the old stock and making the place their own.
The first three windows they were here were so busy, it felt unsustainable.
But things haven’t really slowed down. In fact they’re now into the stage of selling off the players they bought in their first wave. It goes against traditional football logic to be constantly moving players around – but it does make sense on the balance sheet.
Chelsea trade Madueke and Gittens
This summer has a perfect example – Noni Madueke, bought two and a half years ago and becoming an important player, is sold off and replaced by £55m Jamie Gittens.
They’re both a similar age, a level, a similar position. Why change the one that’s comfortable and established for someone who will have to start that process all over again?
Put simply, the answer is profit. Put slightly less simply, the answer is amortised book value.
Pundit backs Madueke to have higher ceiling than Gittens
But how does it work in a football way? Danny Murphy had his say on TalkSport:
“It will be interesting with Gittens to see how he does. They paid the same money for him as they got for Madueke. My gut feeling is that Madueke has probably got a bit more. He might prove me wrong; we’ll have to wait and see.”
So he’s laid his cards down. We’ve seen some exciting flashes of Gittens and we have to admit that we always felt we could improve on Madueke. But as so often in football, the players you see up close always seem more flawed than the latest exciting transfer target.
It’s an interesting plotline to follow through this season and beyond.
Gitten is younger than madurke but give gitten time and he needs more minutes of playing time regularly to adapt the fast paced and physicality of the league and he will get better. But he has to learn defensively too .
Did you completely forget Maresca’s repeated comments about Madueke, SuperFrank? He identified (and anyone paying attention to his match play could see) that Madueke lacked commitment and focus. Based on Maresca’s comments we know that Madueke didn’t train well and anyone could see this carried over to his match play. It was maddening to watch him show a moment of brilliance in attack and the next minute completely switch off when it came time to make a recovery run and get stuck in defensively. And once an otherwise mild-mannered manager has called you out in public and you show no demonstrable effort to correct your behavior then it can’t be a surprise when you’re shipped off. What’s surprising to me (and I’m sure other readers) is how you have managed to overlook/ignore this well-documented plot point in order to side with critics of the ownership.