Chelsea have wasted little time making a name for themselves as the chief eyebrow-raisers when it comes to the transfer market in the first 19 months of the Todd Boehly era.
Be it breaking the British transfer record twice in as many windows, signing a whopping 27 new players, splashing £945million, or selling three key midfielders to direct rivals – Chelsea have well and truly ripped up the rule book in the last 12 months when it comes to the transfer market.
But it is not so much who is walking through the door to rapturous fanfares, as much as who has been sold with seemingly little consideration that is the most intriguing piece of the Chelsea enigma.
The Blues’ academy has become one of the most fruitful in the country, producing the likes of Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Fikayo Tomori and Marc Guehi, who would have little issue getting into most Premier League teams, but were seemingly deemed expendable at Chelsea.
So why, with Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City all flaunting the impressive riches of their exceptional youth set ups by building squads around their brightest gems, have so many Chelsea academy starlets been let go?
