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Adarabioyo and five more Chelsea transfers for Maresca to complete this summer

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Adarabioyo and five more Chelsea transfers for Maresca to complete this summer

0, 12, 9, 9. That is the number of signings made by the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital in each of their four transfer windows in charge of Chelsea, made for the men’s first team.

Those windows have been overseen by three different managers. The fifth will be under the management of Enzo Maresca after he was appointed by the club on Monday afternoon following a week of talks with the former Leicester City boss.




Maresca will be, for some in the squad, the sixth head coach since the summer of 2022. In that time there has been a near-total overhaul of everything at the club. His arrival promises to bring yet more change again.

The 44-year-old’s style is far removed from that of his predecessor Mauricio Pochettino, and with that there will need to be changes to his squad. Although it has been compiled largely by the co-sporting directors of Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, led by recruitment guru Joe Shields and overseen by the co-owners Boehly, Behdad Eghbali, and Jose E Feliciano, there are still gaps.

At left-back there are serious questions over who will take the team forward as first-choice due to the injury problems for Ben Chilwell, a likeliness that Ian Maatsen leaves for Borussia Dortmund permanently, and patchy performances of Marc Cucurella. That is far from the only area of concern or in need of addressing.

Despite letting Edouard Mendy and Kepa Arriazabalaga depart last summer with the arrival of Robert Sanchez and Djordje Petrovic, Chelsea are already looking at new options in goal. Kepa will return from his loan to leave an initial five senior goalkeepers for Maresca to manage – with Marcus Bettinelli the perennial third-choice.

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The club are eyeing up possible targets to be in Maresca’s ball-dominant system. They want a player able to effectively be another centre-back at times to allow for overloads elsewhere. The disjointed nature of recruitment at times has perhaps best been shown in the use of ‘keepers.

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