Chelsea could still bring in a number of players to bolster Enzo Maresca’s squad but they’ll have to do it off the back of a boatload of sales that are yet to be completed.
In the Italian’s own words, there are still 15 players at Cobham not training with the first team, and that’s a number that’ll need to be scaled down before Deadline Day on Friday. Last week, the Blues boss indicated that their gameplan for the final week of the transfer window will be to find players that won’t be in his plans new homes – but that may take time giving the amount of overhauling he’s planning.
“I just communicate the players that I like and the players I don’t like and because there is one week, or 10 days, left of the transfer window, hopefully we can find solutions for all of them,” he told journalists. “When you find solutions, everyone is happy. When you don’t find a solution, then you can create some problems.
“At the moment, with the squad that we have, I am working with 22, 23 or 21 players – not with the 42 players otherwise it is impossible. It is impossible for any manager in the world to make a session with 45 players. It’s impossible. You cannot do that.
“Hopefully when the transfer window is finished, if they [players that aren’t training with them] find a solution then hopefully for them it is better. In case they don’t find a solution, I do not know, we are going to see.”
Amid the pile of ‘sell’ players, there are those they’ve already signed this summer – 11 in total – but that number could well rise to at least 13 over the coming days. Talk of a potential swap deal for Manchester United winger Jadon Sancho and the over-present reports surrounding their chase for Napoli striker Victor Osimhen appear to be the two most likely arrivals which would follow an influx of young talent.
The likes of Marc Guiu, Pedro Neto and Joao Felix are some of the new additions to the attacking ranks while Tosin Adarabioyo, Renato Veiga and Filip Jorgensen look promising in helping to shore up the defensive department. All six of those stars have made their debuts at Chelsea under Maresca, and we’re only three matches into the new campaign – it hasn’t taken long for the Italian to start mixing and matching to find his best XI.
But there’s still a number of other decisions he’ll have to focus on alongside the club’s sporting directors Lawrence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, who are looking to complete a huge amount of business by the end of Friday night. With that being said, football.london is assessing the biggest decisions still hanging over Maresca and Chelsea with a few days to go before the market closes.
Is Osimhen even worth it?
If he does eventually arrive at Stamford Bridge this summer, Victor Osimhen may well have to light the Premier League on fire similar to the way Erling Haaland first did when he arrived given the amount of headaches he’s causing those at and around the club.
The Nigeria international’s reputation for scoring goals certainly precedes him, as evidenced by the enormous price tag that Napoli put in his contract, but the 25-year-old is now starting to effectively be a detriment to his own cause of trying to find a move away. Refusing to take a pay-cut whilst simultaneously ruling out options like the Saudi Pro League has severely limited his number of potential suitors and football.london understands that there’s still a lot more work the club need to do to in terms of witling down Osimhen’s personal demands in order to suit the club’s wage structure.
He isn’t the only attacking option being considered by Chelsea this late into the window and the Blues shouldn’t be afraid to pull the rug out from underneath the deal if it’s not satisfactory for them. Chelsea were a club before Osimhen and they’ll be a club after him – failing to secure the striker will not be the end of the world and a decision like that wouldn’t make this summer a bad window for the club.
Sterling controversy
Where to even start with Raheem Sterling? The surprise statement an hour before Chelsea kicked off their 2024/25 season under a new manager certainly got under the skin of some at the club which is why he’s essentially been exiled from the first team and told to find someplace else to ruffle feathers.
And I don’t blame them one bit either. Whether Sterling was right to question his future at the club or not, there’s a time and a place to do so – something which was done in private two days before when Maresca told him that he wouldn’t be playing. It’s not like he told the England international he wouldn’t be in the squad and he was adamant on not playing him for the rest of the season.
Sterling himself claimed he’d been featured so heavily in preseason, so why release the statement? Take the decision and move on. Show Maresca you deserve to start by working hard. But apparently that’s not the answer, so now he’s stuck in limbo. A potential swap deal with Manchester United is on the cards but as a player, I can’t imagine that’s a particularly exciting destination given their start to the season with a loss to Brighton and a scrappy 1-0 win over Fulham.
Newcastle United or Arsenal are two other options that may actually be more interesting to Sterling given he’d get minutes regularly under Eddie Howe, but may be turned off by Mikel Arteta. Either way, Chelsea need to solve this issue – they did well to nip it in the bud following the statement but now they need to kill it off. They need to make a decision on the best way to get Sterling off the books, whether that’s a loan, swap or permanent deal and sort it before the Friday deadline.
