With Chelsea sitting third in the table and doing far better than at the same stage a year ago, it’s tough to be too critical of anything that’s happened since Enzo Maresca arrived.
But has our success come despite our summer moves, rather than because of it?
The players who arrived in the summer were Omari Kellyman, Joao Felix, Jadon Sancho, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Marc Guiu, Tosin Adarabioyo and Pedro Neto.
Neto was the only one from that group who started on Sunday. In fact, he’s the only one even remotely close to first team minutes at the moment.
For now it’s worked out fine, because everyone has believed they’ve got a chance of forcing their way in. But David Hytner of the Guardian noticed Joao Felix show frustration when he realised he wasn’t getting on the pitch against Arsenal. Christopher Nkunku is being linked with moves away after getting to play 2 minutes.
Dissent is starting, and there risks being the return of a mardy dressing room because there are not enough league minutes to go around. Lesser competitions will only satisfy big names for so long – and it’s also a total waste of money and academy talent to have superstars bought this summer facing 7 year old Armenian teams.
Squad balancing act to only get more difficult for Maresca
So how will this window end up being looked back on? The fact that the team has started the season well is slightly distracting from the fact that it was, in large part, pretty disastrous.
The team that is succeeding right now is almost entirely built from players who arrived before the summer. The players added are just featuring in the “B team” that plays in the Conference League. And frankly, we’d be top of that competition had we just used academy players and spare first teamers we already had lying around.
As many have pointed out, if the funds spent on 3 or 4 players this summer had been channelled into a single top striker, goalkeeper or central defender, we might well be better off.
