4 Notable takeaways from Chelsea’s winter spending spree

Recruitment is more important than sales

Speaking strictly on football, there’s too much evidence supporting the fact that the players you buy are more important than the players you sell. Many fans often complain about clubs selling players they shouldn’t have sold, but don’t complain as much about their clubs buying players they shouldn’t have bought. Players are staff contracted to the club for a period of time. Clubs hope to win trophies with players, but they also hope to be able to make profits from the player if the opportunity presents itself.

Players will not be at clubs forever, and without looking it up, how many players can you name that played their whole senior careers at one club other than AC Milan’s Paolo Maldini and AS Roma’s Francesco Totti? When clubs get opportunities to sell players for profit, they very often do, but that’s never where the problem is. The problem is that these clubs do a very bad job of reinvesting that money into the playing staff. For reference, check how Liverpool reinvested the money they got from the Philippe Coutinho sale and how Tottenham Hotspur reinvested the money they got from the Gareth Bale sale. Now compare the two. Many clubs have gone on to buy poorly scouted players for huge money or even small money, to replace key players that were sold.

Chelsea has spent a lot of money in this window, and they also spent a lot of money in the window before this one, but this window saw CFC bring in better scouted players, and you know they’re better scouted because so far, the players haven’t needed four weeks to adapt. Badiashile has looked right at home from the moment he stepped in. Mudryk had a 30-minute cameo where he looked like the most dangerous player on a pitch that had Mohamed Salah, Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo.