Chelsea tactics and transfers: Finally some tactics and transfers
It’s not worth worrying too much that Chelsea’s approach recently has been pretty scattergun. In the years towards the end of Roman’s reign and the sanctions, Manchester City and Liverpool solidified their holds on the best squads in the Premier League. It’s also important to remember in CFC’s first couple of windows under Roman, as he and the staff figured out their cadence and way of doing business, they made many purchases whose importance to the squad only became apparent later as they worked their way into the parlance of the club culture.
Roman’s desire to spend less coupled with the fact that Chelsea became an increasingly unappealing destination compared to the two northern giants meant that the gulf in quality between the clubs widened extremely. So even though Chelsea spent too much money on both Marc Cucurella and Wesley Fofana in the end both transfers moved the dial in terms of overall squad quality in a necessary way.
Cucurella was also being courted by Man City and CFC wanted to avoid legal action over Graham Potter and the rest of the Brighton staff coming over to Stamford Bridge mid-season. Maintaining a relationship with an intelligent mid-table club like Brighton who are an important proving ground and likely loan club for our youth in future was a smart move. If it cost an extra 12 million or so on top of Cucurella’s value that’s ultimately not a big deal.
Fofana is one of the most promising young defenders in Europe and Chelsea overpaid them but again the defensive line of Azpilicueta, Thiago Silva and Koulibaly simply could not be allowed to stand. Chelsea slipping into that position was an issue and they really paid the price of their foolishness there.
The worry with Fofana is the peculiar chosen ignorance over his injury history which people seem to pretend is only ever the one leg break. Every year for the past four years Wesley Fofana has missed time because of a plethora of knee injuries. One of which he is suffering with right now.
It’s possible he kicks the injury bug as he’s still early in his career but that usually has more to do with the nature of the medical staff and their new ideas and medical genius. That’s why it’s worth keeping an eye on the developments around Chelsea’s medical restructuring. Until recently Chelsea was one of the only competitors to Bayern Munich for the best medical staff in Europe. The Blues like the Bavarians were so confident in their ability that they were offering new contracts to and signing players with injuries as serious as ACL and Achilles tears.
The outcome of that medical staff evolution is going to have a profound impact on Fofana’s career. Chelsea needs to continue to focus on adding depth and athleticism as they move forward in the transfer window.