Chelsea begin squad restructuring

Chelsea, which suffered a catastrophe on all fronts in the previous season, despite huge investments in players from new owners, initiated another personnel restructuring. He has already parted ways with three leading players, including the club’s top scorer in the last league Kai Havertz.

All the leading British media resources have reported that a fairly significant deal between the two London giants will be officially announced in the near future. Famous German player Kai Havertz is joining Arsenal from Chelsea. The BBC is estimating the cost of his transfer to the team that finished second behind Manchester City in the championship and expects to strengthen ahead of the start in the Champions League at £ 65 million, including various bonuses.

In fact, it is more correct to consider this transition not as a separate event, but as a continuation of an already emerging trend. He is linked to yet another personnel reshuffle at Chelsea, this time based on a nightmare he endured last season.

It was the first for the Londoners after the change of owner – Roman Abramovich, who sold the team to a consortium of entrepreneurs led by the American Todd Beuly. The new owners invested huge amounts of money in the club, spending a record amount of about £ 550 million on staffing within two transfer windows. However, instead of taking off, Chelsea suffered a catastrophe on all fronts, becoming the undisputed number one loser among all continental giants. He flew out of the FA Cup and the English League Cup early enough, lost to Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, and managed to take 12th place in the national championship.

Failures resulted, among other things, in constant changes of coaches: in the course of the season, Chelsea managed to manage as many as four mentors. And after its finish, the Londoners appointed the famous Argentinean specialist Mauricio Pochettino to the key post, from whom they expected, among other things, immediate measures to correct the expensive, sonorous, colorful, but, as it turned out, extremely ineffective club application.

Actually, even before the news regarding Kai Havertz, these adjustments started. Chelsea released their main defensive midfielder, veteran N’Golo Kante, to Saudi Al-Ittihad, and also gave Manchester City another midfielder, Mateo Kovacic, for £30 million. The sale of Kai Havertz in this sense is a completely logical step.

The German joined Chelsea from Bayer Leverkusen in 2020 for €80m, a record-breaking purchase for the club at the time. Havertz was considered one of the most promising young players in the world, but his career span at Chelsea certainly did not boost his quotes. The player has had spectacular matches – it was he who scored the only goal against Manchester City, which brought the Londoners victory in the Champions League final in 2021. But in general, Havertz was not very productive. For example, in the previous championship of England, he became the team’s top scorer, but he did not have to perform grandiose feats for this: only seven goals were enough. True, the fault in this, apparently, is not so much Kai Havertz himself, but the system in which he found himself. The German, who from his youth served as a playing along, acting from the depths of a striker or even an attacking midfielder, was most often sent to Chelsea to spearhead the attack.

At the same time, just the attack looked like perhaps the most problematic line of the club. According to the results of the championship, he had only 38 goals in his asset. Not only did the teams at the top of the table score much more, but even the relegated Leicester and Leeds teams from the Premier League.

Chelsea have already found a possible alternative to Kai Havertz. A few days ago, he bought Frenchman Christopher Nkunku from Leipzig for what most sources say is around €60m, not counting bonuses. In terms of a set of qualities, Nkunku’s functionality is similar to Havertz, but he is still much more accustomed to the role of a player who completes attacks. And the past season has confirmed this feature perfectly. Nkunku, having sent 16 goals in it to the opponents’ goal, shared the title of the strongest scorer of the German championship with Niklas Füllkrug from Werder Bremen.

However, neither the BBC nor The Guardian doubt that the “clearing” of the application to Chelsea will not be limited to the deals that have already taken place. According to their forecasts, in the summer, Londoners looking for a way out of the crisis will make another series of sales and purchases.

Alexey Dospekhov