Worrying pre-season results and ill-conceived recruitment leave manager Enzo Maresca with headaches before the new campaign
Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca during a pre-season friendly against Real Madrid in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 6th, 2024. Photograph: Grant Halverson/Getty ImagesPre-season is always about the performance and never about the results. And even then there has to be an awareness of what managers are looking for from each individual game: clubs can be at different stages of their physical development or managers may be working on a specific ploy. They are means to an end.
But it’s not just results. There’s also a pervading sense of chaos. After the initial splurge following the Clearlake takeover, the £1 billion spent on 28 senior players, this was supposed to be when the consolidation began. They had signed young players, we were told, so that there would be less need for upheaval as the project progressed. Players would grow into stature at the club.
Chelsea's new signing Pedro Neto during a pre-season friendly at Stamford Bridge, London. Photograph: Zac Goodwin/PA Wire That’s why Hall, Omari Hutchinson and Ian Maatsen have been sold for a combined £86 million, with sales of Conor Gallagher, who is close to a switch to Atlético, and Trevoh Chalobah, who has been linked to Crystal Palace and Aston Villa, likely to take that figure to around £150 million. All five of those players are academy products and therefore represent pure profit; there is no amortised fee to be taken into account. Yet soon there’ll be no academy products left to sell.
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