Chelsea's astonishing £737.5m all-time most expensive XI - including ex-Man Utd & Brighton starsChelsea's astonishing £737.5m all-time most expensive XI - including ex-Man Utd & Brighton stars
Chelsea's astonishing £737.5m all-time most expensive XI - including ex-Man Utd & Brighton stars | Getty Images
The most expensive team assembled by Chelsea, starring big-money former Manchester United and Brighton players.
It’s Christmas time, and we recently had a festive thought – wouldn’t it be incredible to have Todd Boehly as a relative? If he buys presents like he buys players, then nobody would feel shortchanged, although a few of the gifts would probably have to go back to the shop, of course. As long as he keeps the receipts, it would be wonderful.
Since Chelsea’s current owners took charge at Stamford Bridge, they’ve been spending money like it’s about to be made illegal, and as a result a side which has underperformed since Roman Abramovich also happens to be one of the most expensive teams ever assembled.
With that though in mind, we were wondering what the most expensive XI Chelsea have ever assembled would look like – lined up in 4-2-3-1 formation, this is the priciest ‘sensible’ side you can make from all those big-money buys. Although, as you’re about to find out, the word ‘sensible’ is having its definition stretched to new limits here…
GK: Kepa Arrizabalaga (£72m)
We made some of the tired old Todd Boehly jokes in the introduction but it’s not like they never dropped any clangers in the Abramovich years – somehow, it’s more than six years already since Chelsea made Kepa the most expensive goalkeeper in history, only to be rewarded with a string of flappy, unconvincing performances and his legendarily obnoxious refusal to be substituted during the EFL Cup final. Now on loan at Bournemouth, which is a pretty good indicator of how well this particular investment panned out.
LB: Marc Cucurella (£62m)
For a long time, it looked as though Brighton had taken Chelsea to the cleaners with this deal, which started at £55m but could end up going higher if conditions are met – the bouncy-haired full-back was abysmal for a long time, but having found a new lease of life with the Spanish national team he looks rather more handy these days. Which is good timing, given that poor Ben Chilwell seems to have broken down.
CB: Wesley Fofana (£75m)
Some of the signings in this team were just plain daft, but with Fofana it’s fair to say that the Blues have been brutally unlucky. Two serious, season-ending injuries in two years mean that he’s barely played since all that cash was spent on his services – but he’s finally fit and featuring pretty regularly under Enzo Maresca, at least. Maybe he can start to pay off some of that colossal transfer fee now, but getting full value wouldn’t have been an easy task even if his legs had remained intact.
CB: Axel Disasi (£37.5m)
The ball-playing defender has bounced in and out of the team without really leaving a mark since signing from AS Monaco. He hasn’t been particularly bad, but neither has he looked like he was worth €45m. Now largely relegated to appearances in the Europa Conference League and one suspects that the club are looking for a buyer.
RB: Malo Gusto (£26.5m)
There are a few central defenders who sometimes play on the right – Disasi included – who could have taken this spot, but Gusto is the priciest ‘proper’ full-back they’ve ever paid for and we also wanted to be fair enough to include a deal which actually looks pretty good so far. The Frenchman is young but developing at a healthy rate and already among the Premier League’s better right-backs. A reasonable transfer fee, well spent. To quote an old friend, “even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.”
DM: Moisés Caicedo (£115m)
The most expensive transfer in British history, Caicedo has proven himself to be a perfectly good midfielder who might even be worth half of what Chelsa spent on him. The good news is that Caicedo has time on his side and does seem to be growing into his role at the club – but it will take Blues fans a while to forget his utterly nightmarish debut.
DM: Enzo Fernández (£107m)
Perhaps in a few years’ time we’ll have watched Caicedo and Enzo grow together and develop into a central midfield partnership worth more than £200m, but right now it just looks like Chelsea have bought two very good players for transfer fees that they’ll never live up to. Enzo has looked world class in flashes, but there haven’t been enough of them to justify the cash – or the controversy.
AM: Kai Havertz (£71m)
Given how good Havertz was at Bayer Leverkusen, one can’t really blame the club for splashing so much money out to sign him. Given that he was sold a few years later for a loss of over £10m, however, it’s not a move that’s aged very well – but still, he scored the winning goal in a Champions League final, and perhaps that’s worth any amount of money.
LW: Mykhaylo Mudryk (£88.5m)
A lot of Mudryk’s staggering transfer fee was wrapped up in add-ons, and one suspects that he won’t have triggered quite a few of them, so £88.5m may end up being an exaggeration – but the Ukrainian winger has sadly become the poster boy for the worst spending habits of the Boehly & Eghbali era at Stamford Bridge since he arrived from Shakhtar Donetsk. Pace and energy have simply never converted into productivity.
RW: Christian Pulisic (£57.5m)
The American winger never really lived up to his billing at Stamford Bridge, although he certainly had his moments – he’s found more consistency since departing for AC Milan. 20 goals in 98 league games is a pretty solid return for a winger, in fairness, but he still left with the feeling that he’d been something of a disappointment. He often plays on the left wing, but given his political leanings it’s seems perfectly reasonable to put him on the right here.
CF: Romelu Lukaku (£97.5m)
Bought for £17m, sold for £28m, bought again for a staggering £97.5m… and then sold for just £30m or so - Lukaku’s transfer history reads like the kind of Facebook maths problems that reveal just how many people didn’t pay attention in class. The Belgian’s rollercoaster career has seen him go from brilliant to bad, to better to worse, from looking slow and lumbering to lightning fast from one season to the next, and Chelsea never saw the best of him. For all those investments, he scored 15 goals in just 59 games in a blue shirt. A truly strange career.
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