Chelsea have named a new central defensive pairing for tonight’s game against Wolves – the returning Trevoh Chalobah plays with Tosin, who is restored to the team.
They join the swirl of options at the back – some out injured, some not fancied by the coach, some freshly recalled. One has even been announced today as a signing for the summer. There are certainly no shortage of options at the back, but as Jamie Carragher pointed out on Sky’s Monday Night Football just now, it’s an issue of quality, not quantity:
“What you’ve got is, you’ve got a lot of centre-backs. They’re not, in terms of squad size, short at centre back. It’s probably in terms of quality, in terms of one real stand-out. You think of Saliba at Arsenal, you think of Van Dijk at Liverpool. That’s what this Chelsea team needs. Someone of that sort of stature and presence.”
Sadly those players are pretty hard to find. But one has to question the approach so far – buying players who are know to be pretty average like Axel Disasi or Tosin is not how you go about finding those “unicorn” special defenders who can take you to the next level.
You can see Carragher speaking in the clip embedded here:
“Minimum requirement has to be Champions League football next season” @Carra23 on Chelsea’s targets for the season 🔵 pic.twitter.com/rIqPid31fn
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) January 20, 2025
Carragher clear on Chelsea’s minimum aims for this season
Carragher also took the chance to have a bigger picture look at this team and what the expectations should be for this season. He was pretty clear on what he thought:
“Chelsea have to get Champions League football this season. I know it’s a a young team, I get that. But the money that’s been spent over the last few years… minimum requirements have to be Champions League next season.”
It’s hard to argue with that – especially when you consider how well we were doing after 19 games. Failure to make Europe’s top competition next season would be a major failure.
