Tactics and Transfers: Five transfers the Blues should make this summer

Chelsea needs reinforcements at the back and during such a vital transfer window, here are some of the big names the Blues should bring in.

The Blues accomplished their main goal for the year, but would not have been well served by continuing on into the later rounds of the Champions League. Bayern Munich is one of the best sides in Europe and the rest they have had since the end of the Bundesliga season showed on Saturday night. Chelsea appeared tired, lethargic and ready for the end of the season.

This year, it would have been a failure to suggest that Chelsea was anything other than what we have always known. The Blues are a young team with a lot of potential and an equal amount of deficiencies. They have talented players like Mason Mount, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Tammy Abraham, Christian Pulisic and Reece James and yet, at the same time, can’t do the basics. They can’t track runners into the box in transition, they can’t communicate with each other on who to mark in the air and they certainly can’t play the offside trap well enough to conceive trying it.

That’s why they finished the season scraping into fourth place—despite having been able to proudly claim third—losing the FA Cup final and falling out of the Champions League to a better side by too large a margin. The goals for this season were lower than they normally are at Chelsea Football Club, so patience and intelligence needed to be exercised. Management by Marina Granovskaia, Petr Cech, Frank Lampard and Mr. Abramovich has been as perfect as can be for the circumstances, but they all know the same as the rest of us. The goal for the Blues is—and will always be—to win and not just win once or twice. Every game and every single trophy, every single year, that’s the goal.

If that’s going to be achieved Chelsea is going to need at least one defender and this week that’s what we’re going to discuss:

Kalidou Koulibaly (Napoli); the gold standard

I don’t subscribe to the theory that you can have a side that consists entirely of young players and play at the very top levels of European football. At some point there simply has to be experience in the side. The young players need professionals to learn from and mentor them if they’re going to be the players that they have the potential to be—Chelsea needs to know that. There’s already enough youth in the side and enough talent to take this squad on for the next decade, but that talent needs to be shaped; a player like Kalidou Koulibaly would be the perfect piece to do that. Though there’s more to consider with Koulibaly than a lot of other options, you can always do a lot worse than plugging one of the best players in the world into the biggest hole you’ve got in the team.

The Napoli defender is publicly for sale as the Southern Italian side is already looking for several new signings and could use an injection to keep its books balanced. Chelsea could spring a deal here that would be mutually beneficial to both sides.

If Aurelio De Laurentiis is going to stick to his €90 million asking price, the Blues should simply smile and walk away, but that’s likely a bluff on his part. He bet wrong and he knows it. The market crashed and he doesn’t have the same negotiating position as before. At 29, Koulibaly is just as much about his value off the field as he is on it. If De Laurentiis would accept somewhere between €50-60 million then that would be a deal Chelsea should look at. Koulibaly could teach young Ethan Ampadu and Fikayo Tomori a lot about the world of the Champions League and domestic defending. He’d also blend well with Zouma immediately and add the sort of height that the Blues are lacking.

Ruben Dias (Benfica)

Benfica’s young central defender Ruben Dias looks like he could very well be one of the best centerbacks in the world for a long time to come. His combination of height, size, speed and big club pedigree means he would adapt to Chelsea quickly.

Dias adds the sort of physicality and intelligence that the back line needs to shore itself up. Chelsea has a great relationship with Benfica from a business perspective and this, perhaps even more so than a deal for Kalidou Koulibaly, makes logical sense. Dias is 23 and could play for the Blues for over a decade if both sides play their cards right. He’s already got a ton of experience, and he is a vocal, decisive presence in the center of defence for the Lisbon giants. This is the sort of move that could prove to be smart business for a very long time.

Declan Rice (West Ham)

Everybody has heard the name and the rumors—there are some obvious worries though. West Ham want Virgil van Dijk money and that’s all there is to say on the subject. Is Declan Rice as good as the Dutch giant? No. That brings us to the second concern; Rice doesn’t even play in the position Chelsea would be buying him to play at the moment for a club with fewer options than the Blues have. If Rice is kept out of position by Angelo Ogbonna and Issa Diop, is he really going to immediately catapult the Blues defence to respectability? Likely not.

That said, Rice is a good player. He’s dependable and rarely injured; he’s tough and plays very classically British—rough and tough defensively—but isn’t a slouch with the ball either. If West Ham wanted to negotiate on this planet, as opposed to the moon, then this is something that the Blues should think about. At his age, Rice is already the captain of West Ham on occasion and that’s something to be proud of. West Ham is a proper football club and it means something to be asked to captain Bobby Moore’s team. That can’t be overlooked.

One worries though about whether or not Rice’s character and judgment could decline if partnered with his best friend? Crazier things have happened. Lampard will likely have that sorted, but it should not be assumed just because his best friend is Mount that they’ll both do their best work together. To pay for that sort of problem would be the sort of thing that the Blues actually can’t afford, even if they have the money.

Jose Gimenez (Atletico Madrid)

The Uruguayan defender is one of the best defenders in the world at the moment. Injecting him into the side makes the Blues better overnight. Adding he and goalkeeper Jan Oblak together in a double deal isn’t even a crazy option considering the state of Atletico Madrid’s finances at the moment.

The issue that nobody seems to discuss is that Gimenez is very injury prone. During his seven years in Madrid, he has only ever played more than 30 games twice. That’s in La Liga, where the game is less physical and the referees offer more protection. In England, that simply doesn’t happen to the same extent. If he can’t offer the Blues even 30 games, how is he going to fix the problems? The amount of money that he would cost in conjunction with his inability to stay on the field is worrying. That could be turned around, sure. Everybody is only one day away from the rest of their lives—but still it’s important to plan for the worst, even while you hope for the best—and Gimenez leaves a little more to plan for than most. That is not the sort of problem that you pay to have.

James Tarkowski (Burnley) and Lewis Dunk (Brighton)

Both of these men are fine options in all honesty.

They’re good players who have proven Premier League experience and would be able to plug in and fix some of the holes that the Blues haven’t been able to so far. Tarkowski has his head on straight and understands the game well. For what it’s worth, I don’t know that there’s a better coach of a classic center back in the world than Sean Dyche and Chelsea could use a little bit of that. Dunk is similar and it would be an equal disservice to simply classify him as simply a bargain buy. He’s a damn fine defender all across the board.

These two players on the list represent the surest value for money. They’ve played in the division and made genuine impacts already. The Blues could use a little bit of what both of them offer as they would surely organize the defence and add a little bit of toughness to what has been an embarrassingly glass-jawed unit this year. They’re non-glamorous and effective, Chelsea could use a little bit more of that these days.

In conclusion, each of these options represents a big improvement in regards to the situation that the Blues currently call a defence. It’s hard to figure out who would be best and why; the only thing that Chelsea knows at the moment is that the season has ended and it knows where the holes are. If the Blues don’t fix them before next season though, the whole ship could very possibly go down. These are the basics of football that they need to start getting right.

The options above likely fix a lot of them the only question is: which one? That said, if there’s one thing that’s true, it’s that the Blues are frustratingly high on confection and light on character recently. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. That, more than anything, needs to be fixed before a ball is kicked in anger next year.