Most of the speculation around Chelsea’s transfer ban has been about the effects of not being able to sign new players. Andreas Christensen, though, gave voice to those who could be trapped behind the lines.
Chelsea may respond to the prohibition against buying new players by refusing to sell any of their current players. Andreas Christensen said Chelsea “want to keep all the players” since FIFA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport will not suspend the ban pending the club’s appeal. While that may be good news for the fans when it comes to players like Eden Hazard, it is bad news – career-damaging bad news – for someone like Christensen.
Christensen has been one of the biggest victims of Maurizio Sarri’s shift to a four-man defence and myopic devotion to David Luiz. He arguably has paid the highest price under Sarri. Gary Cahill was treated appallingly and Olivier Giroud is nonsensically shunted, but those two players are towards the end of their careers. Conversely, Sarri has been negligent in developing youth players like Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ethan Ampadu, but they are still teenagers in the process of building up their yearly playing time.
Christensen, on the other hand, is entering his prime years. He should be building on what he learned and how he developed over the last three seasons at Borussia Monchengladbach and Chelsea. He played over 2,000 league minutes in each of the last three seasons. This season he may not break 2,000 minutes in all competitions.
That kind of reversal impacts a player’s match sharpness, confidence, transfer value and, therefore, potentially his career as a whole. No player will take that sitting down. If he works hard in training, proves himself in his limited appearances and still does not have a way into the team, his only real option is to leave.
But if Christensen is correct, the club will not sell him despite the reversal in his career progression, his supposed desire to leave and Sarri’s disinterest in him as more than a Europa League fill-in. The rumours a few weeks ago of Chelsea working to extend David Luiz support what the Dane is saying, while making his future even darker than this season has been. If Maurizio Sarri and David Luiz stay, Christensen will have two lost seasons instead of just one.
This situation and others like it show why Maurizio Sarri is the absolute wrong coach for a transfer ban and why, as my colleague Travis argues, Sarri sees Chelsea as a waystation to bigger and better things.
If Sarri was thinking about more than just this season and next season, he would have started making changes to his rotation as soon as FIFA shut down the appeals process. A coach looking a year or two over the horizon would recognize that he must develop his future squads. Obviously, he should be doing that from day one, but if not, the day after a transfer ban is nearly as good. With no reinforcements coming in he must build those reinforcements himself, and do it now. He must have players who are physically ready and motivated to play for an entire season.
By doing so, he will also be protecting, if not increasing their transfer value. That is not among a coach’s primary concerns, but it is the sort of thing a coach thinks of when he thinks about the club and the future. Simple economics: More money from sales means more money for purchases. It’s so easy, a banker could figure it out.
That means immediately integrating players who will be 23 – not 33 – next spring (that’s Andreas Christensen and David Luiz, respectively, in case you missed it).
But next spring seems no more Sarri’s concern than Andreas Christensen’s career development. Nothing beyond the range of the moment, which includes his favoured few, ever seems to be Sarri’s concern. For someone who is praised as a philosopher, he lives in the here and now more than a beagle ecstatically devouring her dinner.
If Maurizio Sarri cannot get the players he wants from the transfer market, he will continue with the players he has in the exact same roles they are currently in. Merit-based mobility has no place in Sarriball.
Andreas Christensen deserves a way out if Maurizio Sarri will not give him a way up. The best hope for Christensen is the club and the coach part ways.
They can even use the transfer ban to save face. Sarri would not want to stay at Stamford Bridge under the ban any more than many fans and players would want him to stay. Sarri and Chelsea can agree to a mutual separation, and the club can bring in a coach who will use the players he has to their best effect and build a squad for the future rather than on past successes and personal feelings.
Chelsea let Cesc Fabregas and Victor Moses leave, and that was the right thing to do for them, even if it was subpar squad management by the club (500+ days, remember). Hopefully Andreas Christensen will not have reason to regret not pushing a move in January.