This is the first in a series analyzing major football clubs and attempting to spot their needs ahead of the summer transfer window.
This time, it’s Chelsea, who one has to figure will be making some big moves to add depth to their aging team. They also have a relatively rational management structure, unlike Real Madrid, to the degree that Abramovich can be considered rational. This makes Chelsea a more attractive target for analysis than Liverpoo who have even more pressing needs since Benitez evidently has no regard for such concepts as squad depth or developing young talent and in any event probably won’t be around by the time the window opens anyway.
Ages players are turning before or during next season:
30: Florent Malouda, Ashley Cole, and John Terry (although of course he already moves like he’s 35)
32: Ricardo Carvalho, Frank Lampard, Nico Anelka, Paulo Ferreira
33: Didier Drogba, Deco
34: Michael Ballack, Juliano Belletti (June birthday, so will be 35 by the time his contract is up at the end of next year)
35: Hilario
They do have a good crop of players in their primes, but old enough that it would be good to start backing them up with young long-term replacements.
29: Petr Cech (May birthday, will be 28 for the whole season if Chelsea misses out on the FA or Champions’ Cup finals, but obviously he’s a keeper so probably has a good five years left in him unless he breaks his skull again), Joe Cole (will almost certainly not be at Chelsea next year),
28: Michael Essien, Alex, Jose Bosingwa
27: Branislav Ivanovic, Yuri Zhirkov
There are surprisingly few youngish but in-their-prime squad players, again not their current ages but what they will turn during next season:
26: Ross Turnbull (young for a keeper but does anyone really think he’s good enough for a team of Chelsea’s ambitions?)
25: Salomon Kalou
24: John Obi Mikel
Chelsea has a few promising youngsters they appear to rate, but none get any playing time except Daniel Sturridge. I feel a little ridiculous listing 19 year olds because who knows how good they’ll be and I don’t mean to suggest that I have any idea how these players will develop in the future, but it is worth noting that none of Chelsea’s youngsters has forced his way into the team or particularly impressed on loan, meaning that none of them (again excepting Sturridge and maybe Bruma) seem ready to replace the oldsters. Of this, more below.
23: Michael Mancienne (on loan at Wolves; you’d think if he was going to develop into a replacement for Carvalho we’d have seen something impressive by age 22)
22: Nemanja Matic, Slobodan Rajkovic, Franco Di Santo (who played a lot for Blackburn on loan for the first half of the season, scoring one good goal, but has largely looked worse than useless and since B’Burn’s injury problems have lessened he’s barely played), Scott Sinclair (on loan at Wigan, has scored 1 league goal and 1 cup goal, both against Hull)
21: Daniel Sturridge, Miroslav Stoch (decent scoring record for a winger on loan at Twente, but as Babel and Huntelaar prove, anyone can score in Holland)
20:
19: Jeffrey Bruma, Gael Kakuta, Fabio Borini, Patrick van Aanholt
Analysis:
Again, it’s unpredictable how these young players will develop. But the fact remains that the only players that actually play for Chelsea whose best years could plausibly be ahead of them are Kalou, Mikel, and Sturridge. They have a few good prospects, of course, but none that look ready to break into the team. Compare this group of young’uns to Arsenal or United, or for that matter the next tier of teams (Spurs, Villa, Everton, City) who all have more young players seeing significant playing time and more youngsters pushing into the squad. (I exclude Liverpool because they haven’t developed any young talent whatsoever since Benitez came along except Emiliano Insua, and he didn’t progress gradually so much as go to bed a boy one night in October and wake up a man. And signing N’Gog doesn’t count.)
Di Santo and Sinclair can’t score for love nor money in the Premiership; Matic, Rajkovic, and Stoch are old enough that if they were going to be good enough for Chelsea it seems like they’d be either breaking into the team or tearing up the podunk leagues they’re on loan to. For the sake of argument, say the most likely departures occur (Deco, who has said he wants to go home to Brazil after this season, and Joe Cole, who has broken off contract negotiations and will probably be playing elsewhere in the Premiership next year having left on a Bosman). I don’t rate Belletti, Ferreira, Turnbull, or Hilario, and I’d be surprised if anyone else does. If nothing else, Belletti is too old, and it appears Ferreira is available (not included in the Champions’ League squad, in fact Chelsea has an empty spot they chose not to use on him, which tells me they wanted him to be available for European competition and therefore more desirable to potential suitors).
If Ferreira, Deco, Belletti and Joe Cole leave, as seems likely, it leaves them with a squad–assuming they play with a similar diamond formation–that looks like this, including backups. I’m also going to assume that they’re planning on signing a versatile attacking midfielder to replace Cole, who I’ve designated C-R for Cole Replacement. Players in parenthesis are included in a second, less favored position where they nonetheless provide solid cover to make this a more meaningful depth chart.
GK: Cech/Hilario/Turnbull/Rhys Taylor (young, gash)
R-FB: Bosingwa/Ivanovic/(Mancienne)
L-FB: Cole/Zhirkov
CB pairing: Terry/(Ivanovic)/Mancienne and Carvalho/Alex
DM: Essien/Mikel/Matic/(Ballack)
AM: Lampard/Ballack/(C-R)
L/RM: 2 of Malouda, C-R, (Ballack) (why oh why do they use him as a right midfielder so often?!), Kalouda, and Stoch
F: 2 of Drogba/Anelka/Sturridge/Di Santo/Borini/Sinclair
To be clear, this is still a good team, albeit lacking depth in midfield, but it is aging very rapidly and another year down the road, fully half the team will have noticeably declined. Nowhere are both sides of this coin more evident than in the old but very effective forward line, especially as none of Di Santo, Borini, and Sinclair have particularly impressed and therefore new signings are probably needed to replace Drogba and Anelka down the road. Mikel’s utter lack of tactical nous means that whoever plays RM has to help him boss the midfield, which limits the team’s width and ability to counter-attack, but isn’t the end of the world. The team has a decent mid-to-late 20s core and plenty of 30-year-olds with a year or two left, but after that it gets very, very slim. Kakuta and whichever of the other youngsters pans out will help, but this team needs some youngish replacements and soon to stay competitive. Unless they rate Mancienne pretty highly, it seems a young center back ought to be high on their list; there are plenty of good young ones out there at smallish clubs (see my Real Madrid scouting report; since Madrid won’t go that route, that’s one more of them available for Chelsea). Cole/Zhirkov and Bosingwa/Ivanovic is fine on the flanks for a while, especially since Mancienne can cover the right, although Belletti needs to go. The biggest problem is the attack-minded midfielders. The Cole replacement is going to be a key signing who needs to be able to play Lampard’s position as well as wide, and unless Kakuta develops very quickly or Stoch picks it up they’ll probably need another wide guy so they can stop using the rapidly aging (and already unconvincing) Ballack out there. I can think of several excellent players in those position that I really, really hope they don’t splurge on (Gourcuff, di Maria, Matias Fernandez, etc.). And before long, they will definitely need a new striker because, probably sooner rather than later. I’m skeptical that Matic and Stoch are going to be the guys to step into the team and provide cover, but we’ll see.
If I were Ancelotti and had the budget, I would go about this by signing one youngish but established out-and-out wide midfielder, preferably one who can play on either side (Santi Cazorla, Matias Fernandez, David Silva, and Angel Di Maria all come to mind) and one forward who can also play as an attacking midfielder (I suspect this idea underlies the constant Aguero rumors; if Perez is crazy enough to sell Higuain, he would be a great signing here; and Giuseppe Rossi would also fulfill this role while giving Corey another Chelsea player to hate). That provides some needed depth at forward and attacking midfield; both players would fit into the rotation neatly and get plenty of time, and would provide long-term replacements for some of the players who will be aging out of usefulness. Another idea would be to plan on playing both Mikel and Essien as long as both are available, with Essien playing on the right and giving Mikel the help his stupidity necessitates. This would shift the need for backup somewhat to defensive midfield cover assuming Matic isn’t good enough, despite his stature (dude’s a 6’5″ Serbian) and a move for Fernando Gago (if they could beat City to his signature), Miguel Veloso, or a similar youngish defensive midfielder who offers something going forward would be the smart play.
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