Joe Cole has launched an attack on Chelsea’s historical recruitment strategy, questioning how the club allowed a leader like Marc Guehi to slip through the net.
Marc Guehi’s departure from Chelsea has gone from a standard transfer to a tale of talent mismanagement. Since leaving Cobham in 2021, Guehi transformed into a Premier League titan at Crystal Palace, captaining the side to historic FA Cup and Community Shield victories.
And now at Manchester City, Guehi has seamlessly integrated into the champions’ backline, looking every bit the world-class leader Chelsea currently lacks.
While Guehi anchors the league’s most stable defence, Chelsea’s 2026 campaign has been defined by a center-back crisis. With Levi Colwill sidelined by a long-term ACL injury and Wesley Fofana remaining inconsistent, Liam Rosenior’s side has conceded 38 league goals, the eighth-worst record in the league.
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Joe Cole says Chelsea should never have sold Marc Guehi
On the Dressing Room podcast, Joe Cole has been very vocal about the decision to sell Marc Guehi, stating that there should be some kind of investigation into how it came about.
“But I look at where Chelsea are as a club and are desperately trying to find a centre-half, spending hundreds of millions of pounds. You had a kid in the building (Guehi).
“He’s so assured, he’s a captain. You see him play, he’s calm. He came from Chelsea from the age of six. We sold him to Crystal Palace, and then now he’s at Man City, and he looks like he’s been there for 20 years.
“And I’m looking at him and I’m just like, ‘how does this kid got a Man City shirt on?’ The team should have been built around him five years ago.
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“Whoever’s let him out the door at Chelsea… If I’m the owner, I’m going, right, whose decision or what collective of people’s decision was it to think it was a good idea to let this kid leave the club?”
“Because unless you find out who’s making these decisions, these decisions will continue to happen and you’ll keep losing players like that. You need to do an appraisal on it.”
Why did Marc Guehi leave Chelsea?
Again, the decision for Marc Guehi to leave Chelsea came down to them not handing him enough game time, which at the time, was unavoidable due to the quality of centre-backs at the club.
“I thought the decision to leave Chelsea and come to Palace was the right one to get that game time and hopefully show what I can do.
“Coming here didn’t mean it was going to be a given that I would play; I still had to prove myself, work hard, train hard, but it was definitely the club I thought would give me the platform to do so.”
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