Jordan Henderson and Danny Welbeck are Chelsea players now. They are not the signings we've come to expect from Chelsea in recent years, but that's exactly why they are the signings Chelsea needed more than ever.
The blueprint of spending over the odds on relatively unproven players needed to be ripped up. It didn't work and led to one of Chelsea's most unsuccessful periods in recent history.
Isolating the two additions of Henderson and Welbeck only, it's clear to see that Chelsea are looking to add experience to their ranks. They might have short shelf lives, but if they can inspire the next generation, then Chelsea will be repaid more than dividends.
Chelsea signed Jordan Henderson and Danny Welbeck to add necessary experience
Henderson and Welbeck are the two Chelsea players with the most appearances in the Premier League, by a long shot.
Chelsea player | Total Premier League appearances |
|---|---|
Jordan Henderson | 463 |
Danny Welbeck | 400 |
Pedro Neto | 180 |
Robert Sanchez | 170 |
Reece James | 156 |
They also come in as Premier League winners. Henderson won the title with Liverpool, whereas Welbeck won the title with Man United.
At face value, it's easy for rival fans to point at Henderson and Welbeck's arrivals and laugh. They are easy targets, but Chelsea haven't made it any better for themselves with their poor transfer activity of late.
However, with every piece of context taken into account, Henderson and Welbeck are game-changing additions. They change the entire ethos of the Chelsea dressing room, and having played in some legendary squads before, they should be given the license to lead plenty of the discourse.
Look, Xabi Alonso is unorthodox. He is one of those managers whom you are better to judge him at the end of the season, rather than the start.
In every role that he's had to date, the results spoke for themselves. He led Bayer Leverkusen to the unthinkable, winning the Bundesliga without losing a single game.
His Real Madrid tenure was short-lived, but that was more the fault of the ownership than Alonso himself. Real could still win titles with him in charge, but when he left, Real confirmed one of their worst seasons ever from the fans' perspective. The decision to remove Alonso was more political than results-influenced.
Right now, the future is uncertain at Chelsea, but for once, that's genuinely exciting. Uncertain is better than certainly bad (the direction the Blues were heading before Alonso came in).
The definition of insanity is repeating the same process and expecting different results. Chelsea could very easily sign every starlet under the sun and point to two years from now as the time they will finally come good. They've done plenty of that in the past, and it's not worked.
Chelsea needed to change their ways, and Alonso put his reputation on the line by signing Henderson and Welbeck in a short period of time is proof that desperate times call for desperate measures.
Nobody can complain about a change in direction when the previous direction was as grim as it was.
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