Whisper it here, but perhaps the time has come to give Chelsea some credit for their transfer business.
That’s not the kind of thing you will hear many people say.
Given the club spent over a billion pounds ($1.27bn) on players across the past three transfer windows and sit only ninth in the Premier League, having finished 12th in the 20-team competition last season, it is only fair to come under plenty of negative scrutiny.
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But whenever people talk about that Chelsea spending spree, the money raised from their outgoings in those same three windows rarely gets a mention. The Athletic first highlighted this as a talking point in June and we were inevitably met with a mixed reaction. But sales have been key to the Boehly-Clearlake consortium’s business model since their spring 2022 takeover and attempts — successful so far — to comply with the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR).
There was a significant clearout of the squad last summer, raising over £200million. There is risk involved whenever a club decide to let a player go; if he goes on to thrive elsewhere, a sense of regret is inevitable. But most of those who left Stamford Bridge had been on very high salaries, so their departures also helped reduce the wage bill.
The Athletic reflected on the progress of Chelsea’s loanees last month. Now, we take a look at last summer’s 12 highest-profile sales to assess how they are doing in pastures new — and if Chelsea have cause to bemoan the decisions to part with them.
Kai Havertz
Club: Arsenal
Fee: £65million, including add-ons
Minutes played: 1,975
Goals: Five
It has been a rather familiar story for Havertz at the Emirates Stadium to the one he lived over his three years at Stamford Bridge.
The Germany international has divided the Arsenal fanbase with his displays as he tries to find a role in their team which brings out the best in him. Manager Mikel Arteta continues to back his man to come good and has started him in 22 of their 30 matches in all competitions. The 24-year-old has not appeared in only one of the 30 — through suspension after getting to five bookings — and has scored five times and provided one assist.
Four of those goals came in the space of seven games in the month before Christmas, which stoked a belief he was beginning to settle in.
But with Arsenal suffering a loss of form — they have won once in seven games — Havertz has come under the spotlight again. His poor finishing in the 2-0 FA Cup defeat at home against Liverpool in their most recent match, where he was played up front, drew particular scrutiny.
It is still early in his career across the capital, but Chelsea have no reason to rue his sale as yet, especially with the size of the fee they received.
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Mason Mount
Club: Manchester United
Fee: £55million, plus £5m in add-ons
Minutes played: 626
Goals: None
Mount was undoubtedly the most controversial of Chelsea’s sales over the period we are examining.
As one of the best graduates from their academy in recent years, and a key member of the side which won the Champions League in 2021, allowing the England midfielder to join a direct Premier League rival was quite a risk.
There were two sides to the story. The club believed they had no choice due to Mount having just one year left on his contract and with talks over an extension breaking down over terms. The player felt Chelsea no longer wanted him and that a deliberate choice was made to cash in months before he actually left.
Chelsea will be thinking: so far, so good.
Mount has made just seven starts for United in all competitions, with one assist and no goals in 12 total appearances. That is mainly due to having the misfortune of suffering hamstring and calf injuries, so no one should be gloating just yet. He is hoping to return from the latter issue soon to help United in the second half of their season.
Having turned 25 this month, Mount obviously still has plenty to offer when fully fit. But even when he was playing, United manager Erik ten Hag struggled to eke the best out of him and the balance in United’s midfield was not right. Mount appeared to be used more as a presser than a creator in the final third.
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Mateo Kovacic
Club: Manchester City
Fee: £25million
Minutes played: 1,517
Goals: One
Given the injury issues Chelsea have endured, there is certainly an argument that head coach Mauricio Pochettino would have benefitted from Kovacic staying at Stamford Bridge. His experience would have been useful in the dressing room, too.
Yet Chelsea received a good sum for a player who will be 30 when this season ends and had just one year left on his contract. Kovacic has also had a spell out of the City side with a thigh injury. He has only started just over half of their games (17 of 32) and is being utilised more as a squad player — but is performing the role well.
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This was a deal that suited both parties. Chelsea are trying to build a new team full of younger players and Kovacic did not have much more to offer them after five years in west London. The player, though has already won the Super Cup and Club World Cup since the transfer, while City are also in contention to retain their Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup titles.
Christian Pulisic
Club: AC Milan
Fee: £18.8million (including add-ons)
Minutes: 1,859
Goals: Seven
Pulisic can lay claim to being the most successful of all Chelsea sales from our sample up to now.
The United States international is in great form for AC Milan: seven goals, six assists and Serie A’s Player of the Month award for December. Perhaps more significantly, he has stayed fit. At Chelsea, the constant niggles and setbacks made him appear injury prone and not tough enough to cope with the demands of top-flight English football. However, he has been a regular for Milan, with 23 starts among his 26 appearances.
His record with the Italians is already far superior to that of his whole final season at Chelsea, in which he started just 10 times (in 30 appearances), played 1,012 minutes and recorded just one goal and two assists. He has been Milan’s most consistent wide player, too, outshining Rafael Leao and Samuel Chukwueze.
In four years at Chelsea, he had rarely shown this consistency. And with Pochettino now boasting Raheem Sterling, Mykhailo Mudryk, Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke and Carney Chukwuemeka in the positions Pulisic preferred, it is for the best he was moved on.
Given he had just 12 months left on his deal and his lack of contribution in 2022-23, Chelsea’s new owners did well to secure the fee they did — even if the previous regime had forked out £58million to sign him from Borussia Dortmund.
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Ruben Loftus-Cheek
Club: AC Milan
Fee: £14million, plus £3m in add-ons
Minutes: 1,426
Goals: Two
Just as with Pulisic, things have worked out well for Loftus-Cheek at one of the biggest clubs in Serie A.
Barring a spell out with a groin injury in October, he has been a fixture in the side. Of his 21 appearances across all competitions, 18 have been starts. He has scored twice and assisted two goals for team-mates, giving a stand-out performance in November’s 2-1 win over Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League when the pressure was on the home side to secure a first victory in the group stage.
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In a recent interview with The Athletic, 117-cap Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini highlighted how Loftus-Cheek (along with fellow Englishmen Chris Smalling at Roma and Milan team-mate Fikayo Tomori) was physically “three times better than most players in Italy”.
High praise indeed.
Similar to Kovacic, had Chelsea known they would suffer from so many injuries — particularly with Romeo Lavia making just one appearance, off the bench, since joining from Southampton last summer — then it might have been beneficial for Loftus-Cheek to stick around. But he also had just a year left on his deal and Chelsea removed his £150,000 a week salary from the books, so selling was still the right thing for them to do.
Kalidou Koulibaly
Club: Al Hilal
Fee: £17million
Minutes: 2,056
Goals: One
First things first: this was an embarrassing loss for the hierarchy. Chelsea paid Napoli £34million for centre-back Koulibaly in summer 2022; 12 months later, he was sold for half that. Chelsea accepted they made a mistake and, rather than prolonging the situation and continuing to pay wages of over £200,000 per week, they moved him on.
Koulibaly is doing well at Al Hilal, who lead the Saudi Pro League by seven points. The Senegal international has formed a good partnership with Ali Al-Bulayhi, which has helped the team establish the best defensive record in the division with only nine goals conceded to date — 10 less than the division’s next stingiest defence.
Cynics will question the standard of opposition Koulibaly is up against, but he kept Cristiano Ronaldo off the scoresheet in a 3-0 win over second-place Al Nassr last month. Al Hilal have also qualified for the last 16 of the Asian Champions League next month and the semi-finals of the King’s Cup (Saudi’s equivalent of the FA Cup).
Chelsea have been very unconvincing at the back this season — but that was the case when Koulibaly was in their team too.
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Edouard Mendy
Club: Al Ahli
Fee: £16million
Minutes: 1,890
He was integral to Chelsea winning the Champions League three years ago, but few of their fans were sorry to see Mendy join Koulibaly in Saudi Arabia last summer.
The 31-year-old goalkeeper made the same kind of error on his debut, in a 3-1 home win against Al Hazem, which saw him lose his No 1 spot at Chelsea. He passed the ball straight to Vina, and the Brazilian chipped it back over him and in. Observers noted how Mendy continued to struggle with the ball at his feet and would rush off his line unconvincingly. Sound familiar?
In his first seven appearances in the Saudi Pro League, Mendy conceded 13 times. Not all of those were his fault, clearly. Al Ahli have made a lot of changes in defence, and his fellow new signings Roger Ibanez and Merih Demiral have not played together as much as they would have hoped because of injury.
Mendy and his team have been looking more settled lately, as six successive league clean sheets indicate. But Chelsea have moved on to Robert Sanchez and Djordje Petrovic as their goalkeeping options, with the latter, in particular, having impressed.
Ethan Ampadu
Club: Leeds United
Fee: £7million
Minutes: 2,700
Goals: Two
Ampadu never had a chance to become a first-team regular at Chelsea. After joining from Exeter City as a 16-year-old in summer 2017, he made just 12 senior appearances, and only one — lasting 10 minutes — in the Premier League. This is quite surprising when you consider he has amassed 49 caps for Wales and is still just 23. Ampadu is also versatile, able to play in defence and midfield.
Leeds are benefitting from that versatility now. Ampadu has started all 30 of their matches this season, including 27 in the Championship as they push to return to the Premier League after relegation in May. New manager Daniel Farke has mostly used him as one of the two midfielders in his favoured 4-2-3-1 formation — the same one Pochettino employs.
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Granted, Ampadu is in the second tier of English football but you could argue the pressure of playing at that level for a club of Leeds’ stature and trying to help them win promotion is just as intense.
Leeds feel like they got a really good deal, and it is hard to argue to the contrary. When you consider Chelsea spent £23.5million last summer on Lesley Ugochukwu, who has shown little to justify that fee as yet, questions could be asked whether they would have been better off giving Ampadu a chance instead.
Callum Hudson-Odoi
Club: Nottingham Forest
Fee: £5million
Minutes: 573
Goals: One
At first glance, Hudson-Odoi’s statistics are underwhelming. Apart from a stunning goal on his Forest debut against Burnley in September — and two subsequent assists — there has not been much else to be too excited about. He has completed 90 minutes just once, and that was in a 2-2 draw with League One visitors Blackpool in the FA Cup third round.
Hudson-Odoi moved late in last summer’s window and was not involved in Chelsea’s preparations under Pochettino before that. It meant he did not have a proper pre-season — something that should be taken into account when it comes to assessing his impact at Forest.
When he was Forest head coach, Steve Cooper liked the winger but had doubts over whether he was fit enough to start every week. Now Nuno Espirito Santo has replaced the sacked Cooper, the 23-year-old has someone new to impress. There is cause for optimism in that Morgan Gibbs-White has been moved to play more centrally, allowing Hudson-Odoi and Anthony Elanga to feature on the flanks.
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But this amount of playing time is similar to what he was getting at Chelsea, where he was on a basic package of £120,000 a week. Hudson-Odoi has a better chance of fulfilling his potential elsewhere.
N’Golo Kante
Club: Al Ittihad
Fee: Free
Minutes: 1,970
Goals: None
Another dilemma for Chelsea last year was whether to give one of their best-ever midfielders a new contract. Injuries restricted Kante to just nine appearances in their 50 matches, so it was decided it would be best to let him leave as a free agent. Kante also stood to earn more at Saudi champions Al Ittihad than had been discussed with Chelsea, so was keen to leave.
He has played a lot more this season, albeit the pace and intensity of the game in the Saudi Pro League is not as demanding. The 32-year-old has shown flashes of his old form even if, of the three Chelsea players to make the move to Saudi Arabia last summer, his contribution is considered to be the least impactful. That is partly because Al Ittihad are struggling to gel as a team.
Al Ittihad are seventh in the table, 25 points behind leaders Al Hilal, after 18 matches. Kante suffered a muscular injury in November, and, since his return last month, the team have lost four of their five games with the only win coming against Auckland City in the Club World Cup.
Kante may not have generated a transfer fee, but freeing themselves of his £290,000 a week salary was clearly significant for Chelsea.
Cesar Azpilicueta
Club: Atletico Madrid
Fee: Free
Minutes: 1,184
Goals: None
Azpilicueta’s leadership has been missed at Chelsea.
The Spaniard was rewarded for his 11 years of service by being granted a free transfer to join Atletico, even though he had a year left on his contract. He has made 21 appearances for his new club, albeit only 11 of those have been starts. Coach Diego Simeone has used the Spain international more centrally in defence than he was at Chelsea in the last few seasons and he is enjoying being back in his homeland for the first time since his 2010 move from Osasuna to France’s Marseille.
As much as the now 34-year-old was admired at Chelsea, paying £180,000 a week to someone who was becoming a bit-part player made this move worth their while.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Club: Marseille
Fee: Free
Minutes: 1,895
Goals: 13
Chelsea have struggled up front this season, so was Aubameyang worth keeping?
Well, perhaps not, if L’Equipe’s player ratings are anything to go by. The French newspaper are notoriously harsh judges, but the striker currently averages 4.67 (out of 10) for his Marseille displays.
Beginning with a run of one goal in his first 12 Ligue 1 fixtures did not help. The former Arsenal captain has done better since Gennaro Gattuso replaced Marcelino as head coach in late September and his overall record now reads 13 goals and seven assists from 26 appearances — and he was named Ligue 1 player of the month for December.
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That improved form has helped Marseille reach the Europa League’s knockout phase next month, but they are a disappointing seventh in Ligue 1, 15 points adrift of leaders Paris Saint-Germain.
As with the other two free-agent departures listed here, Aubameyang was on a hefty salary (over £160,000 a week), which is why Chelsea were prepared to let him leave with a year remaining on that deal. And with Pochettino wanting his forwards to join in the general play, his style would not have suited the current setup in the unlikely event he had stayed.
(Top photos: Getty Images)