Financial Fair Play (FFP) and Chelsea’s long-term monetary strategy are issues for Todd Pawley, not Graham Potter or his signings.
But looking at recent history, the addition of £256m of extra players since their last game against Fulham on 12 January will only add to the pressure.
After losing 2-1 to Craven Cottage, the club acquired four more people: Mihail Mudrik, Noni Madueke, Malo Gusto and the most famous of all, Enzo Fernandez, who cost the club a record £107 million.
Only a fraction of that cost is paid upfront thanks to a depreciation policy that essentially spreads the player’s costs over the life of their contract, allowing them to squeeze into FFP realms.
Off the field, Chelsea really have time to fix things. Potter is not.
Fernandes is perhaps the most interesting case, a midfielder who most Chelsea fans would have called difficult this time around two months ago, but who was reportedly signed for the World Cup; not because he is a multiple winner or a skilled cutlery holder, but because he was an integral part of the trophy-winning Argentina team.
The inexperienced but creatively gifted 22-year-old will make his debut on Friday night and could expect to weigh as much as Joao Felix, who is suspended on his debut in the second leg due to a red card. Three weeks ago. Before the dismissal, the Portuguese striker looked good, although he missed two chances.
Mudrik fared better. It’s been 50 days since his last appearance for Shakhtar Donetsk, when he made his debut against Liverpool, and aside from a close-range miss, he was impressive in his allotted 35 minutes.
There is growing desperation over Chelsea’s attempts to salvage their season, not least because their pledge to pay hundreds of millions of pounds in transfer fees could be tied to Champions League qualification. They enter the game at 10pm on Friday.e Position: 10 points behind fourth-placed Manchester United, two points behind Fulham and closer to the relegation zone than second-placed Manchester City.
Notably, Fernandez is left with a very short grace period, costing roughly one-sixth of Chelsea’s total two-window spending since Boli took over. He will soon have to adjust to the Premier League that killed Felix. His attack on Kenny Tete in difficult circumstances was not malicious, but merely a harbinger of the woes of reshuffling players from a very different league and climate. at the end of a west London derby with the club in crisis mode.
Potter will hope he has time to turn on new players and to some extent he has come down off the precipice by beating Crystal Palace 1-0 and a draw, albeit an extremely uncomfortable one, that epitomizes how far we have come. these two great clubs. fell, at Anfield. Anything less than three points against Fulham will take him back to where he was a month ago.
Chelsea recruits for January
- Enzo Fernandez (£106.8m from Benfica)
- Mikhail Mudrik (£88.5m from Shakhtar Donetsk)
- Benoit Badiashiel (£35 million from Monaco)
- Noni Maduke (£26m from PSV)
- Little taste (26 million pounds from Lyon)
- Andre Santos (£18 million from Vasco da Gama)
- David Datro Fofana (£10.5m from Molde)
- Joao Felix (£10 million loan from Atlético Madrid)
The Chelsea side might not look too different, with Benoît Badiashile, Mudrik and Fernandez likely to feature as relatively unknowns, while 18-year-old Lewis Hall will keep his seat. He risks another unwieldy, disparate structure that has haunted Potter since he took over from Thomas Tuchel, and which he admits has players he couldn’t buy.
“I’m the head coach, so I don’t get too involved in the details of the deadline,” he said on Thursday. “I’m just completely focused on training the next day and preparing the team for Fulham.
“I have been at this for too long to know that there are things that you cannot control, and then there was nothing I could do to change anything. I found out that we signed Enzo when everything was ready and I’m very happy because he’s a fantastic player.”
Recruitment at Chelsea is difficult at best, with Christopher Wyvell only taking over as technical director in December and many key staff leaving the club in the post-Roman Abramovich era.
But a year later, in January, Potter can’t let his new charges stay on the ground.
Source: I News
I’m Dave Martin, and I’m an experienced journalist working in the news industry. As a part of my work, I write for 24 News Reporters, covering mostly sports-related topics. With more than 5 years of experience as a journalist, I have written numerous articles on various topics to provide accurate information to readers.