Chelsea do not deserve to recoup their “investment” on Danny Drinkwater

Chelsea have hit new lows – or at least matched previous lows – with their treatment of Danny Drinkwater. The least they could do is take a financial loss to let him move on with his career.

We’re firm believers in giving credit where it’s due, whether it’s the occassional match where David Luiz is defensively disciplined or when The Daily Mail hits the perfect tone in a piece of football writing. This is one of the latter. The Daily Mail took it upon themselves to set aside bias, banter and hot takery to look at how thoroughly Chelsea have erased Danny Drinkwater from the footballing world.

Their report comes a few days after some unreliable rumours about Claudio Ranieri’s interest in bringing Drinkwater to Fulham. The Mail said Chelsea would not entertain any offer – loan or transfer – that does not allow them to cover what they paid for Drinkwater in his fee and wages. This would be an absolute dereliction of the obligation Chelsea owes to the players they buy.

Danny Drinkwater is the extreme example who brings the lesser, partial examples into sharp focus. Chelsea made too much for him because they could in the midst of one of their shopping sprees that load up a given position.

Injuries bookended Drinkwater’s first season as a Blue. His first few months of health coincided with Antonio Conte’s descent into his last few months. Drinkwater enjoyed only a brief period of fitness and Conte’s employment.

The Daily Mail chronicles how quickly and unequivocally Maurizio Sarri decided against Drinkwater. They compared his situation to that of Emanuel Giaccherini. Giaccherini said Sarri “has a relationship problem with squad players. For him, there are only 14 or 15 players.”

Many players to pass through Chelsea over the last 15 years have individual elements of this story. Some were impulse purchases, some were brought into a crowded depth chart at a position, many have endured managerial turnovers, some were on the losing end of a new manager’s style, others were injured at key points in the season or transitions. Danny Drinkwater has experienced all of them in 15 months at Stamford Bridge.

This makes him an extreme victim of Chelsea’s headless, slapdash, thoroughly thoughtless and unprofessional personnel management. The people who ask for players, buy the players, manage the players and coach the players are never the same people. The frequent turnover among coaches ensures there will always be more losers than winners among the squad simply because very few players can transcend many coaches’ styles. If N’Golo Kante is a potential odd-man-out, none are safe.

The situation is inverted with Maurizio Sarri compared to his predecessors. They split with the club because they did not have enough say over the incoming transfers.

Sarri has said he is not too interested in the transfer market. Instead, he exerts his will at the pitch level. He wants complete freedom to cast out the players he does not want, an irrevocable decision according to Emanuel Giaccherini. So far he has that.

But once again, there is no communication. No one is telling him that he has to use all the players he has. No one is giving him the usual “You’ll get the players we give you” speech, but in the opposite direction: “You can’t get rid of the players we don’t choose to sell.”  The front office are making selling decisions with the same level of dialogue with which they make purchase decisions: none.

Sarri won’t use, the club won’t sell and Drinkwater can’t leave because none attach any weight to the others’ values.

There at least used to be some continuity in the form of Michael Emenalo and Roman Abramovich. But Emenalo resigned over a year ago and has not been replaced. Abramovich is less involved, a consequence of struggling to get into the country. Even when they were around, they rarely had a productive two-way relationship with their coaches. It was simply a matter of whose will would win out on a given day (Hint: On a given day, anyone. In the long run, only one).

No one is out front making any decisions other than Maurizio Sarri. This means his winners reign supreme and his losers are at a bleaker depth than any before. This is both a function of Sarri’s man-management practices and the absolute lack of recourse the unfavoured players have.

The faux-hardline stance is that Sarri only has to answer for his job, and players know the risks when they sign. But it is faux. Taking that attitude towards players is the easy way out, nonconfrontational and unaccountable. It’s how little boys pretend to be generals. It’s not how men and women – I’m not letting Marina Gronovskaia off the hook – lead other men.

Teams don’t owe players playing time, but the clubs owe it to players not to screw their careers through the club’s own dysfunction. Chelsea cannot return a season of playing time to Drinkwater, nor would any financial compensation – not even his wages – reparate him for the impact the last year has had on his career. But they can take responsibility – an intrinsic good, and a necessary step for the club’s stunted attempts at growth – and limit the damage by letting Drinkwater go in January. For any fair price on any fair terms.

If Drinkwater cannot recoup what Chelsea took from him, Chelsea do not deserve to recoup what they spent on him.