Optimism is back in style at Chelsea.
Enzo Maresca’s young team have emerged from a testing early Premier League schedule on a clear Champions League qualification trajectory, with an extended run of (theoretically) more favourable fixtures providing an opportunity to consolidate their hold on third place during what remains of 2024.
Cole Palmer is still really, really good, even if he and Chelsea are now being forced to adjust to opponents knowing just how good he is. Around him, a talented core has added greater coherence under summer appointment Maresca to the confidence cultivated last season by his predecessor Mauricio Pochettino, and results are coming despite ‘Marescaball’ still being in the developmental phase.
The debilitating injury crisis that derailed a significant chunk of 2023-24 has finally eased (with the depressing exception of club captain Reece James), and co-owner Clearlake Capital’s grand strategy of assembling a young squad primed to peak in the game’s post-Pep Guardiola/Jurgen Klopp era is also being validated by outside events.
Klopp is gone already and though Liverpool appear to have nailed the immediate transition to new head coach Arne Slot, contract decisions over Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold, all presently on course to be free agents come the summer, loom large. Guardiola has extended his stay as Manchester City manager by another two years but, at the very least, has a significant and complex rebuilding job on his hands. Arsenal have been the Premier League’s next great side for a while under Mikel Arteta, but the pressure for them to actually make that final transformative leap is growing.
Now is a particularly good time for clubs with sky-high aspirations to think boldly.
Chelsea have needed no encouragement to operate with that mindset in the first two years of this ownership group, for better and worse. The transfer market has been a key arena in which to demonstrate the scale of their ambition and that will not change, though Maresca hinted during a press conference in September that this season’s winter window and beyond at Chelsea will look very different to much of what has gone before.
“The target after the last summer (window) is to try to do less things, but more specific,” he said. “This is the target for January and for next summer. Hopefully, it can be like this.”
Chelsea are out of the overhaul business. The squad, contract and salary structure are now broadly where Clearlake want them to be, so from here the upgrades will be more targeted, and the desired gains inevitably more marginal.
Step one could reasonably be described as navigating the messy path from being old(er), expensive (in average-wage terms) and good to young, cheap(er) and good.
Step two is figuring out how to go from good to great.
Elite potential energises Chelsea’s recruitment staff, but the youthfulness coursing through the first-team squad at the club’s Cobham training base complicates many of these decisions. A burst of internal development can very quickly transform the tenor of a conversation about the need for reinforcement in a specific area of the pitch or even render it entirely obsolete.
Only last summer, there was a consensus that Chelsea needed an elite No 9, and the club’s serious exploration of a deal for Victor Osimhen of Napoli highlighted that they were at least highly receptive to that line of thinking. Three months on, Nicolas Jackson is on pace to score 22 non-penalty goals in the Premier League this season, an unequivocally excellent return for any striker not named Erling Haaland.
As long as he is playing as well as this and presumptive 2024-25 Conference League MVP Christopher Nkunku remains his highly over-qualified understudy, the notion of Chelsea adding another forward of Osimhen’s profile feels redundant and potentially even problematic.
When the foundational pillar of your recruitment policy is projecting what a footballer might one day become rather than what they are now, it makes sense to foreground in your squad planning the possibility that the long-term solution to your problem is already in the building (or perhaps across the road, in the academy setup).
Is it necessary to delve into the market again to service Maresca’s stated desire for greater “physicality” in his midfield, or might Cesare Casadei, Lesley Ugochukwu and Andrey Santos meaningfully help with that? Is it worth splashing out on a full-back with a polished technical skill set to fit a bespoke role in the Italian’s system, or is it better to back Malo Gusto to figure it out with time?
The physical frailties of James and Wesley Fofana leave space in the middle and on the right side of Chelsea’s defence for an elite defensive talent to mirror Levi Colwill’s growing value on the left of it. A smart recruitment team might well find that in a more obscure league, or it might just be Josh Acheampong, the 18-year-old Cobham-developed prospect now being monitored by several Premier League rivals and European giants while his contract situation remains unresolved.
Chelsea could probably do with more final-third creation to relieve some of the burden on Palmer, given the level of defensive attention he now routinely attracts. But the Borussia Dortmund version of Jadon Sancho could certainly help with that, and within the next year, Estevao Willian and Kendry Paez will also be added to the mix.
One position stands apart, though. Robert Sanchez turned 27 this month and is in his fifth season as a Premier League goalkeeper. There is nothing beyond infrequent flashes within that sizeable body of evidence to suggest a world-class breakthrough is in his future, and the audible lack of trust in him among the fans at Stamford Bridge provides another formidable obstacle to that outcome.
Summer signing Filip Jorgensen has made a quietly encouraging start to his Chelsea career and may soon force a No 1 change, but he does not immediately come across as the kind of generational talent required to finally banish the unloved shadow of Thibaut Courtois.
To fully realise his vision of football, Maresca needs a unicorn of a ’keeper, like an Alisson or Ederson, who combines spectacular fundamentals with the technical polish and temperament of an outfield player.
It does not take long to realise just how rare a profile that is.
Chelsea have high hopes that they may have found one in giant Belgian teenager Mike Penders, but he is just two games into his professional career with Genk back in his home country. Jorgensen might provide a capable bridge to that potential future, and a preferable one to signing yet another goalkeeper who does not tick all of the boxes; Djordje Petrovic’s situation highlighted last summer that even very solid ’keepers with more traditional skill sets can struggle to command lucrative resale value.
Maresca has been consistent in saying that what he and Chelsea need more than any transfer upgrade is time.
He has a clear incentive to make that particular argument, but it also rings true; the average age of the Premier League champions over the past 10 seasons was 26.9 years, according to fbref.com. The average age of the Champions League’s winners over the same span has been 27. Chelsea’s average age in the league this season is 23.8.
One logical way to bring forward that time horizon — and perhaps even address Maresca’s concern about the lack of a “proper leader” in his squad” — would be to sprinkle this squad with a small number of proven elite performers still in their prime years. Chelsea are not exclusively focused on signing players aged 23 and under, but it would require something exceptional to test Clearlake’s commitment to their broader recruitment strategy and emphasis on lower base salaries with heavy incentives.
Maybe something exceptional will come along. If it does not, Clearlake’s commitment to its plan for Chelsea necessarily doubles as a commitment to the kind of patience Maresca wants.
After all, unlike the rivals who have dominated the top of the Premier League since the title last came to Stamford Bridge seven years ago, time is on their side.
(Top photo: Ed Sykes/Getty Images)
