A year ago, around this time, there was plenty of talk about Chelsea’s so-called “bomb squad”: the London club had too many players, so it was forced to create a kind of alternative group, a second team working on different pitches and at different facilities from the first team. A year later, we are back in much the same place, with several members of Xabi Alonso’s squad, which at the time of writing numbers 40 senior players, more or less officially excluded from the project and training separately. Liam Delap, Axel Disasi, Nicolas Jackson, Mykhaylo Mudryk – recently made available again after his suspension in a doping case – and Marc Guiu are among them, though they are far from the only ones.
There is one difference from last year, though. According to the BBC, citing sources inside the Stamford Bridge club, the “bomb squad” no longer exists as such: the secondary group also includes new signings – Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson, for example – as well as some Academy players. There are currently 12 “excluded” players, although that number changes from day to day depending on Xabi Alonso’s instructions. Last year, the English players’ union, the PFA, took an interest in the situation to make sure the club’s approach did not amount to abuse of the players; this time, there has been no investigation, let alone a warning.
At the same time, Chelsea have published the list of players who have been assigned squad numbers for next season, and Disasi, Badiashile – who has since travelled to Italy to sign for Napoli – Fofana, Guiu and 18-year-old Brazilian Denner, who has just arrived from Corinthians, are all missing from it. The transfer window is not closed yet, of course, and there is still time to complete several departures, with a number of deals still open: Badiashile, as mentioned, has already found a new club, while in the last few hours Jackson and Delap have also been linked with moves elsewhere, with Delap having lost the No. 9 shirt to João Pedro. Even so, Chelsea’s squad remains oversized, to put it mildly, especially when you consider that the Blues will not be playing in any European competition this season. But by now, that has to be considered perfectly normal.