Chelsea fan Paul Merson has some big comments to make on Chelsea right now, and I don’t think you’ll find many who disagree.
Merson doesn’t always get it right in terms of his opinion, at least in MY opinion which of course is just another view as opinions are not right or wrong. But there is so much that Merson says that I find myself fully agreeing with, and this is one of those moments.
EXCLUSIVE! Cole Palmer now has NEW injury and will be out for a set time!
Merson is basically saying that due to Chelsea’s recruitment model and how they only buy players that they can spin profit on if they need to, they will not buy a new goalkeeper upgrade and will not build a squad willing to challenge for the Premier League title. And he truly has a point here.
What Merson has said
In his latest column for Sky Sports today, Merson wrote:
“The way the club works, there’s no profit in spending big on an established goalkeeper.
“They buy young players to move them on again. Very rarely you buy a goalkeeper for a lorry load of money and move them on for a profit. But I think they have missed a trick, you need a goalkeeper who will save you points.
“Robert Sanchez is a brilliant shot-stopper, but his decision making is poor. He’s always got a mistake in the locker.
“No club has ever won anything without a top goalkeeper. It’s very rare.
“Chelsea have a model that they stick to.
“If there’s no profit in it the player won’t be bought. They buy young at the right market value – that doesn’t really work for a goalkeeper.
“It’s changed at Chelsea, as long as they get in the top four to play Champions League. I still see them among the top five, I see them finishing around the third, fourth, fifth mark.
“At the moment, they aren’t building a squad to win the Premier League.”
Only buy players they can flip for a profit??? Hardly! We paid a “lorry load†(to use Merson’s terminology) for players like Caicedo and Enzo because we believed in their talent and upside potential—not because we aim to flip them. We could sell Cole Palmer tomorrow for three or four times what we paid for him and we don’t see him being offered up.
I’m sorry, but just because we’ve been quick to “flip†some guys who never moved beyond the periphery of the squad does not change the fact that MOST of our acquisitions are players the directors legitimately hope to form the cornerstone of a dynasty. While I agree that a proven world-class keeper could catapult this young squad to the next level by providing solidity, leadership, and confidence at the back. But I don’t think that our failure to obtain one (yet) supports Merson’s hyperbolic conclusion. We need look no further than the current squad (Palmer, Enzo, Caicedo, Cucurella, Colwill, Gusto, Neto, Pedro, Fofana, etc.) to see that the intent in MOST of our acquisitions is to build a team that can win consistently for the next decade. If, along the way, the directors are making sure that they buy low enough that, if a player isn’t a good fit, they can still recover their investment, then they ought to be congratulated for their general savvy rather than unfairly (insanely?) condemned for prioritizing profit over winning.