It looks like Chelsea will lose out to Real Madrid in the battle to sign Brazilian sensation Endrick from Palmeiras, and unfortunately, he isn’t going to be the only big transfer target that Chelsea will miss out on.
The reality is, Chelsea have not been seriously challenging for the Premier League title for five years now, and to me, that means we are not the power house club that some still believe we are, at least not right now anyway. Winning the Champions League and collecting the odd honours along the way in recent seasons has simply papered over the cracks.
Currently, Chelsea are 8th in the Premier League in mid-season, and people are out here moaning that we are losing out on targets to clubs like Real Madrid. We are nowhere near these clubs right now and simply do not have their pull power. And we actually haven’t even had that for many years.
Players like Erling Haaland were always going to chose Manchester City over us. City are probably the best club team around and have been for some time.
Jude Bellingham is probably going to chose another club over Chelsea as well, because these players want to challenge for the biggest and best trophies around right away.
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Chelsea right now, are even facing a huge uphill battle to land Champions League football for next season, and people are expecting us to still win races to sign some of the best players in world football!? Take a reality check.
Chelsea are nowhere near that right now. Our new owners have the ambition, know-how, and aspirations to bring us back to the very top, and that is the direction we are heading in. But it will take time.
It will take time to fix past mistakes at this club, terrible transfer decisions, an amateur scouting network, and a culture of wanting everything right there and then and not building for the future. That is what our new owners are doing, and the Chelsea powerhouse WILL be back. But we are not there now/yet, and we have not been for some time.
I’m not saying we can forget about all of our transfer targets, because if we are in the race and ready to match offers and put lucrative terms on the table, like we are, then there is always a chance that we can get some of our targets. But if anyone is surprised by Endrick choosing Real Madrid over Chelsea for example, then I think you need to take a bigger look at the current situation.
Some players will buy into our project, and we are doing our very best to sell this to them. Many players will see what we are building here and still want to be part of it, I am confident of that. But we do also need to be prepared to ‘take some L’s’ along the way. It won’t be this way forever. We do need patience, but unfortunately, I fear that many of our fans simply will not have that.
