Chelsea scored a moral victory at the Court of Arbitration for Sport by getting their transfer ban rescinded and then not signing anyone in the next window. Now what?
Chelsea registered Christian Pulisic and Mateo Kovacic knowing the transfer ban was coming for the summer window. They then appealed it and won, meaning they could do business in the winter window. Then they did none. This isn’t over for some of our writers.
Varun Dani: Was there a budget, plan or strategy for this window at all?
Frank Lampard seemed to have only one requirement for the window: a striker. He had made that abundantly clear in his interviews. Apart from an obvious deficiency of a left back, he restricted his demands because he knew that the most pressing need required more attention.
Despite that, the club seemed to chase unattainable targets for most part of the window. Edinson Cavani, a very logical short-term signing, was ignored until the last few days, making it impossible to get an already complex deal over the line. Then came Dries Mertens, a completely different type of striker who hardly fits the system and is currently injured.
Studying these patterns makes you question if the board wandered aimlessly in the market to feign activity or whether they made any serious efforts at all.
Kevin Peacock: Frank Lampard is disappointed that the club did not sign anyone in January. Rightly so, perhaps. However, the reality is there were very few options available to the club’s transfer gurus. January is seldom the time to make reasoned, financially astute decisions on players supposedly available.
The same names were mooted throughout the window: Edinson Cavani, Dries Mertens, Jadon Sancho, Moussa Dembele, Wilfried Zaha and Ben Chilwell. None were ever likely to join.
Likewise, many Blues seemed destined to depart: Marcos Alonso, Pedro, Willian, Ross Barkley and, of course, Olivier Giroud. None did.
The January transfer window was once again a non-event. It would appear to exist simply to ramp up the football talk during the depths of winter. An antidote to the post-Christmas blues.
No one is really to blame for Chelsea’s failings to deliver new blood to Frank Lampard’s starting XI. Circumstances just dictate a tough time for those trying. The only real winners are the TV companies and media outlets that drip-feed the tittle-tattle to the masses who absolutely lap it up.
Nate Hofmann: What do you buy when there’s nothing for sale?
If the likes of Timo Werner or Jadon Sancho had been available, it would be fair to feel aggrieved. Even Edinson Cavani, who would have been a great addition as a player, wasn’t available on loan and would have been prohibitively expensive as an actual transfer, given his astronomical wages. Shelling out for Paris Saint-Germain’s fifth-best attacking player would have financially torpedoed any chance of going in on those big names in the summer.
Dries Mertens would have been an interesting move, but trying to make a deal with Aurelio De Laurentiis, especially with little more than a day left in the window, was a fool’s errand.
To the club’s credit, they were smart to keep Olivier Giroud around, even if he isn’t thrilled about staying. Sorry, mon ami, but keep on cashing those checks for sitting in the stands.
If you want to scream and shout, though, focus on two players who actually moved: Sander Berge and Erling Haaland.
Barrett Rouen: Football, bloody hell. I’m not really sure what to say. On the one hand, Chelsea have proven themselves so bad at making the right decisions in the past that in some ways no activity is better. It’s addition through subtraction.
That said, Frank Lampard is clearly displeased and, as per usual, I am proven correct. The squad is very thin and not particularly talented, and that’s become more and more obvious in our last few matches.
This was a season in which they were supposed to grow and suffer, and likely that is exactly what will happen. The team isn’t good enough for fourth place and will likely finish in fifth unless Lampard performs a management miracle. Then they won’t be able to get the targets they need without Champions League football, and the club will be back to square one, yet again. What. A. Joy.
January is never a good time to do business, so best off that nothing happened but now we’ll have to hold fast and ride it out. It will be an exciting end to the season if only because nothing is guaranteed at all.
This is a time when previous Chelsea teams could be counted on to rise above expectations because their backs were against the wall. This team, though, has shown none of that character. Hopefully they find some. Quickly.