Four Chelsea stars signed under the Todd Boehly regime may be regretting their moves already after another summer of big spending. Boehly has only been in the doors at Stamford Bridge a little over 12 months and yet he’s parted with the best part of £1billion on new recruits.
Under the American’s ownership, Chelsea have broken the British transfer record twice on mega-money deals for Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo, the latter of which set them back £115million. Chelsea have undergone a complete rebuild in the last year with 24 new players – not including some youth prospects – joining the club over the last three transfer windows.
Some of them have already left the club, including Kalidou Koulibaly who lasted just one season at Stamford Bridge. There will no doubt be some of their other fresher faces considering what their own futures at the club look like with more bodies expected to arrive before the summer out.
One of those players who may be wondering if joining Chelsea was all that wise is likely to be Omari Hutchinson, who left Arsenal last summer to move across London in the hope of more first-team game time. The 19-year-old got just 49 minutes of senior football last term and has since been shipped out on loan to Championship side Ipswich.
Hutchinson has not been helped by the fact that Graham Potter was sacked last season as the ex-Brighton boss thought highly of him and used him regularly in first-team training while he was at the helm. Spending a year on loan in the Championship is by no means the end of the road for a young player at Chelsea.
It is a well-trodden path to first-team football and has worked out for many in the past including Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Reece James just to name a few. But Hutchinson will need to have some season with Ipswich to convince Mauricio Pochettino that he’s worthy of game time, especially when the Chelsea boss already has Mykhaylo Mudryk, Noni Madueke, Raheem Sterling and Christopher Nkunku at his disposal.
Hutchinson will face a very tough battle just to even prove he’s the best of the younger crop in his position coming through, given the Blues have an abundance of attacking talent including the likes of Alex Matos, Kendry Paez, Angelo Gabriel and Diego Moreira. The England starlet is not the only Chelsea player who seems a million miles away from first-team football and may be questioning their decision to make the move despite being in the infancy of their Stamford Bridge career.
Cesare Casadei, who joined in January from Inter Milan this year, and summer signing Lesley Ugochukwu are already facing uncertain futures. Casadei seems well down the pecking order, having spent the second part of last season on loan at Reading and this season been sent out again, joining Leicester in the Championship.
Ugochukwu, meanwhile, may be involved in the first team this season with Pochettino still deciding whether to loan him out or keep him around the squad. When the 19-year-old joined this summer in a £23.2m deal from Rennes, he must have thought he was going to be a key player that Chelsea could build their future around. But just weeks since his move, Chelsea have signed both Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia for even bigger fees – and they’re only 21 and 19 respectively, so will likely be around for a while.
It leaves the two youngsters in a difficult position, especially when Andrey Santos and Conor Gallagher are also thought to be ahead of them in the pecking order. The fourth Boehly signing who may be worried he made the wrong move is David Datro Fofana. The 20-year-old was given opportunities last season but it might be a while before he plays first-team football again for Chelsea, having been sent out on loan to Union Berlin.
The arrivals of Nkunku and Nicolas Jackson made him surplus to requirements this season, and given both are still young who knows how long it’ll be before Datro Fofana can get a sniff again. Furthermore, he won’t be glad to know that Chelsea are still keen to add another big-money striker to their ranks and have been linked with the likes of Dusan Vlahovic, Ivan Toney and Brennan Johnson in recent weeks.
https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/1803771/Chelsea-transfer-news-Todd-Boehly
