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Chelsea have spent around £300m on new signings over the last two transfer window
Let’s be honest: all Chelsea want now is for the season to be over and done with. They’ve gone from winning the Club World Cup last summer to nosediving spectacularly in the second half of the 2025/26 season, sacking two managers and all but blowing their hopes of playing Champions League football next season.
The disjointed style of football has drawn heavy criticism from fans, as the endless squad churn continues to see the expensively assembled mishmash of almost exclusively young players continue to struggle against more experienced opposition. The Blues need a transfer strategy reset, to say the least, ahead of their most important transfer window in years.
Whether that will happen is anyone’s guess, really. While whispers are emerging from the club suggesting they’ll take a more measured approach to summer window and look to recruit at least some players who aren’t still eligible for entry to the local soft-play area, cynics have questioned whether this talk is merely a ploy from the board to quell the uprising around them.
As the 2025/26 season draws to a close, we’ve taken a look back at every player the club signed last summer, and given our verdict on how good the deals were in retrospect. For clarity, we won’t be rating Mike Penders, Ishe Samuels-Smith or Kendry Paez, as neither of them have had an opportunity to play for the club yet.
Rating every signing Chelsea made for 2025/26 season - Essugo to Pedro
Dario Essugo: 5/10 - The Portuguese starlet was the one of the first new signings through the door last summer, arriving on an £18.5m deal from Sporting CP. He missed all of the autumn with a thigh injury, and has played a mere 25 minutes of Premier League football over the course of the season. He wasn’t expected to be a starter by any means, but it’s still got to go down as an underwhelming bit of business.
Liam Delap: 3/10 - At the time they signed him, £30m for a homegrown striker who made it to double figures in Premier League goals with a struggling Ipswich side seemed a fine bit of business. Oh, how wrong that has proven to be. The ex-Man City gem has played 1000 minutes in the league for Chelsea, scoring just one goal. He could well be moved on at the end of the season.
Mamadou Sarr: 5/10 - Another player signed with a view to selling him for a tasty profit in the future, Sarr went back on loan to Strasbourg after the Club World Cup. He was then recalled, following Liam Rosnier’s doomed arrival, and played a handful of matches while largely failing to impress. He’s not featured again since March.
Joao Pedro: 9/10 - At last, something to cheer about! Fair play to the Chelsea recruitment department who got it spot on with their £55m acquisition of the Brazilian striker. Stopped clocks, and all that. He carried his blistering Club World Cup form into the domestic campaign, and has been the Blues’ standout player with an impressive 15 goals in the league so far.
Rating every signing Chelsea made for 2025/26 season - Gittens to Garnacho
Jamie Gittens: 4/10 - that absolute banger he scored against Wolves in the Carabao Cup aside, £48.5m for the ex-Borussia Dortmund starlet is already looking like an obscene waste of money. Yes, his second half of the season has largely been hampered by a hamstring injury, but before that he wasn’t exactly putting himself in Ballon d’Or contention. The raw potential is there, clearly, but amid the dire results, Chelsea are running out of time to develop it.
Jorrel Hato: 5/10 - Another fee in the region of £35m was handed over for a - yep, you guessed it - unproven youngster who had previously played just two and a half seasons of top flight football with Ajax. Amid a defensive injury crisis, he’s got plenty of minutes under his belt and could yet come good, but he’s also been part of a woeful defence who’ve shipped a serious amount of goals.
Estevao: 7/10 - A more positive one here, with the Brazilian wonderkid showing that the club’s desire to bring in teenage talent can work - if deployed in moderation. Injury has scuppered much of his season, but the £29m gem has already shown he’s got what it takes to thrive in the Premier League, and will be looking for a big breakthrough campaign next season.
Alejandro Garnacho: 3/10 - There’s no getting around this - what an appalling piece of business from Chelsea. In one disastrous move they managed not only to hand their rivals a PSR gift in the form of a £40m pure profit sale - something that allowed them to spend far more lavishly than they otherwise would have - but also signed a player who had already proven himself to be out of his depth in the Premier League.
His debut campaign at Stamford Bridge has been largely underwhelming, with his end product failing time and time again. In fairness, he has at least scored some goals and provided the odd assist, and his low rating is more a reflection on the deal itself. The suggestion that Garnacho was signed with a view to a lucrative future sale makes it all the more galling. What’s wrong with a buying a half-decent player who the manager actually wants to fit their system?
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