The Chelsea players who need to improve in 2025/26 - or find themselves on the transfer list.
Chelsea, in their current incarnation, are many things – improving, free-spending, and perhaps a little chaotic, for starters – but one thing they most certainly are not is patient. Players who don’t make an immediate impression get replaced rather quickly.
The owners always seem to be on the lookout for a new toy, and players who aren’t perceived to be carrying their weight will find a new face taking their place in the starting line-up before they know. A significant investment in talented youngsters such as Kendry Páez and Estevão Willian means there will also be a lot of fresh blood looking to break into the first team at the expense of any stragglers.
As such, several players need to prove their worth very soon or find themselves in the same boat as Raheem Sterling, Axel Disasi and quite a few others – on the transfer list and out of Enzo Maresca’s plans. Here are six current stars who will likely still be in the side come September, but who probably need to show the coach just how good they are sooner rather than later for the sake of their careers.
Nicolas Jackson
By most standards, a return of 24 goals in your first 65 Premier League games would be pretty impressive, especially for a relatively young striker who hadn’t played in England before. Jackson, however, still hasn’t fully convinced most observers, and it’s hard to escape the feeling that he really should have scored rather more.
His ability to get into dangerous positions with his sharp movement and blistering pace is beyond doubt, but all too often he takes the wrong option, and according to the xG model he ‘should’ have scored 31 goals on average with the chances he’s had. Throw in his braindead red card in the Club World Cup, and you have a player who needs to demonstrate that he can develop a cooler head (and cooler finishing skills) to keep his place in the long term. Liam Delap’s arrival suggests that Jackson already faces a battle to keep his spot.
Noni Madueke
A box of tricks with quick feet, plenty of flair and the conviction to try almost anything to get past a defender, Madueke has all of the technical qualities required to become a first-rate winger and lacks nothing in terms of self-belief. What he doesn’t have, at least as yet, is consistency.
At his best – such as when he tore Wolves apart and scored a hat-trick – the England international is utterly unplayable. At his worst, he can be guilty of overcomplicating things and losing possession more often than he creates anything resembling a chance, and it doesn’t help that his worst often seems to coincide with big games. Perhaps his least impressive performances of 2024/25 came against Liverpool and Manchester City away, after all. Madueke needs to find ways to beat the best defenders and to produce chances when taking men on one-on-one simply isn’t working. He hasn’t done that yet.
Roméo Lavia
To endure so many injury problems at such a young age is never ideal, to say the very least, but in the 20 games that Lavia has been able to play over the past year, he has seldom looked like a £58m player. That may not be entirely his fault, but that probably wouldn’t matter to the people deciding which players to keep or sell.
Lavia has made a few too many mistakes – conceding a penalty just after coming on against Leicester City, for instance – and seldom looked like he can take games by the scruff of the neck. If the former Southampton midfielder doesn’t show marked improvement this season (and prove that he can stay fit, of course) then he won’t be in the rotation for much longer. It would be harsh on Lavia if they gave up on him when he’s still only 21, but it remains a realistic possibility.
Filip Jörgensen
Chelsea seem to have chosen to change things up between the sticks, with an aborted attempt to sign Mike Maignan already in the books and plenty of rumours suggesting that Robert Sánchez and Đorđe Petrović are on their way out. That gives Jörgensen, last season’s designated back-up, a chance – one he has to take quickly.
If Chelsea do sign another shot-stopper then with Mike Penders also arriving from Genk, Jörgensen be left with a very short leash. The Denmark international hasn’t done a whole lot wrong so far, but neither did he appear to convince Maresca to let him keep the starting job over Sánchez when given a run in the first-team, despite the fact that Sánchez made plenty of well-publicised mistakes. A big pre-season lies ahead for Jörgensen. Either he makes his case to be considered for the starting spot, or he could tumble down the squad list quite quickly.
Levi Colwill
Look, sometimes the headline doesn’t quite line up with the full reality and in all probability, Colwill isn’t exactly in the ‘last chance saloon’. He’s one of Chelsea’s few home-grown success stories, after all, and very much earned his reputation as one of England’s best young defenders. But he also plays for a club who were happy to jettison Conor Gallagher for PSR purposes, and he’s coming off the back of a relatively poor season. He may have less time than you think.
It's not that Colwill was bad, per se, more that he failed to take a step forward from an excellent 2023/24 campaign. There were more mistakes and less composure this time around, while he was less impressive in the air and on the ball and let more ball-carriers slip past him in one-on-one situations. Unlike most players on this list, Colwill will almost certainly still be a nailed-on starter come the end of the transfer window, but if he takes another slight step back, then that may not be the case for all that long.
Tosin Adarabioyo
The mountainous Mancunian defender was very good at Fulham, demonstrating excellent ball skills – he has the archetypal ‘good touch for a big man’ – a good passing range, and the ability to use that impressive frame to good effect when defending. As such, Chelsea snapping him up on a free transfer looked like something of a coup, a rare bit of budget-friendly business for a team used to splashing the cash like a bored billionaire going through a mid-life crisis.
In the end, though, Adarabioyo only started 15 league games for Chelsea and likely only got several of those starts because of injuries elsewhere. He’s been less effective carrying the ball out of defence, has won fewer aerial duels than ever before in his career and hasn’t been putting up as many tackles and turnovers as could have been expected. He’ll start the new season as a back-up, and needs to find his best form quickly to force his way into Maresca’s long-term plans.
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